At the Institut Français de Jordanie - limited to 18 persons
4 Al Sharia College Street - Jabal Webdeh

Rabbot-Ammon in the Iron Age
Katharina Schmidt (German Protestant Institute of Archaeology Amman)
Rabbot-Ammon, literally “The Great (City) of Ammon,” was the capital of the Iron Age kingdom of Ammon, which arose at the beginning of the Iron Age II period (1000 – c. 600 BCE) on the central plateau of Transjordan. The Jabal Al-Qalʽa, located in the middle of the modern city of Amman, is the impressive testimony of this early royal city. Its building structures, however, are invisible to visitors today since they are located in the layers below the Omayyad and Roman ruins. In the 8th and 7th centuries BCE Rabbot-Ammon enjoyed economic and cultural prosperity. This is evidenced by monumental buildings and luxury objects, such as seals, jewelry, and glass vessels found primarily in tombs around the Jabal Al-Qalʽa. Many of these were imported from the Assyrian heartland. These finds demonstrate Ammon's supra-regional integration into the Neo-Assyrian network. The monumental stone statues of Ammonite rulers and gods found in Rabbot-Ammon and its surrounding area are furthermore an impressive evidence for the representation of the Ammonite kings.
The lecture will give an overview of the archaeological and historical testimonies of Rabbot-Ammon as one of the earliest kingdoms of Transjordan and will address the supra-regional importance of the city in the Iron Age period.

Katharina Schmidt has been director of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology (GPIA) in Amman since 2016. Her main research interests centre around the archaeology, and Jordan’s cultural heritage. Her current habilitation project is dedicated to the analysis of Iron Age sculpture from Jordan and the question of the “formation of elites” in this period. Since 2016, she has been leading the excavations on Tall Zirā’a, where she focuses on the settlement history and stratigraphy of the Iron Age period.
Katharina Schmidt studied Near Eastern Archaeology, Assyriology and Pre-and Proto History at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich and at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 2016, she was awarded her doctorate at LMU with a thesis on glass and glass production in the Iron Age period. Katharina Schmidt has worked on excavations in Syria (Tell Halaf) and Turkey (Sirkeli Höyük, Dülük Baba Tepesi).