Jerash: Role of recycled architecture in shaping ancient urban life

AMMAN – Syntheses of ancient Jerash and its urban spread are based largely on studies of monumental ruins, most of whose visible and imposing remains belong to the Roman and Byzantine eras of Jerash.  In 1930’s, Crowfoot's studies drew early attention to the selective reuse of older architectural blocks and entire building units in the construction of the first churches.

Breakdown of the civic infrastructure would happen during the turn of the epoch or during big natural disasters like the famous earthquake from 749 AD.

"Recent material evidence supports contemporary literary references suggesting that during the Crusades and after the Mamluk Jerash had been reduced to impoverished improvised occupancies," said Australian scholar Ina Kehrberg-Ostrasz, adding that in the 19th century, a Circassian and Chechen colony was settled under Ottoman rule and Jerash revived as a township. 

“The history of urban growth has changed relatively little seen in the main through the ruins of public secular and religious monuments which have earned Gerasa the modern attribute "Pompeii of the East",” Kehrberg-Ostrasz elaborated, noting that overshadowed by these acclaimed monumental ruins, it is easy to consider as insignificant, or worse to ignore the seemingly vacant areas between those standing ruins and main thoroughfares. 

"Yet, these buried lots aligning ancient streets and lanes were once an integral part of urban growth and their intended use, or deliberate non-use would have been part of town planning projects. One may posit in addition, that local populations would have made temporary use of unbuilt civic environs," the scholar said, adding that the aerial views demonstrate how repetitively selective the architectural evidence is which has served urban studies of Gerasa until recently.

“Archaeology in Gerasa is still mostly limited to a supporting role for restoration projects of Roman and Byzantine monumental ruins and their architectural studies. Most of the "inter-monumental" urban space thus remains terra incognita and will continue to be covered with excavated debris,” Kehrberg-Ostrasz said, adding that nearly two centuries of topographical, architectural and archaeological explorations, the first two systematic and extensive by Buckingham and his team of surveyors in 1816 and in 1893 by Schumacher have advanced surprisingly little our knowledge of the complexities of urban space as it was conceived and actually used by the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic population.

"Concentration on visible monumental remains and their restoration is also largely responsible for our flawed knowledge of pre-Roman Hellenistic and first century BC/AD Gerasa. Apart from some literary accounts, notably by the 1st century AD historian Flavius Josephus, and first century epigraphic references, until very recently (infra) there has been hardly any material evidence from the second century and little of the first centuries BC and AD," Kehrberg-Ostrasz elaborated.

In the last two decades of the 20th century research on the development of Early Roman Gerasa has relied heavily on findings at the lower terrace of the Zeus Sanctuary conducted by the French scholar Seigne and at the Artemis Sanctuary.

“Architectural blocks from Late Hellenistic buildings were discovered during excavation or anastyloses of Roman monuments, however most evidence for locations of buildings whose existence is known from recycled blocks stays hidden underground,” Kehrberg-Ostrasz underlined, adding that one such case is the Late Hellenistic Temple of Zeus, a good number of whose richly ornamented blocks were found by the excavators in the underground vaults of the first century naos situated on the lower terrace of the Zeus Sanctuary.

"Permitting the argument that the naos was probably located within the earlier precinct of the Zeus Sanctuary, a partial reconstruction on the site was hindered by the fact that the actual location of the monument remains unknown. The blocks are now exhibited together with a hypothetical model in the crypto portico of the lower terrace," Kehrberg-Ostrasz underscored.