GRA participated in a research program that investigated settlement patterns, paleoenvironmental change, and archaeological variability in the earliest sites recorded by the Wadi Hasa Survey (WHS) in west-central Jordan.
GRA participated in developing both general and regional models for hunter-gatherer positioning strategies, synthesizing Levantine paleoenvironmental information pertinent to the 100-10 kyr BP interval, and generating idealized site placement models based on relationships between site size and elevation in environments characterized by marked topographic relief.
Regional paleoenvironmental models based on Mediterranean coastal data were evaluated in terms of their applicability to inland Irano-Turanian steppe adaptations. Temporal distributions of cultural stratigraphic units within and across Hasa tributaries were also examined, to determine whether or not correlations between site size and elevations indicate change over time in forager adaptations and how they relate to regional paleoenvironmental fluctuations.
