Anthea Crane

A spatial analysis of Safaitic inscriptions to study seasonal migrations and localized movements across the Black Desert

Pre-Islamic nomadic pastoralists in modern-day Jordan and Syria carved thousands of inscriptions in the Ancient North Arabian language and Safaitic script, on basalt boulders in the Black Desert. This research project studies these inscriptions in the spatial context of the cultural landscape, in order to understand the regional and local movements of the pre-Islamic pastoralists who practiced seasonal transhumance in the desert.

Previously, ancient mobility in the region has been studied using ethnographic analogy with modern Bedouin, and the inscriptions have been studied epigraphically and linguistically rather than as archaeological artefacts in a cultural landscape. In contrast, this research project will use spatial databases in QGIS to geographically visualize and analyse textual and archaeological information. Agent-based modelling and statistical analysis will be used to investigate whether references in the inscriptions to various seasons can be used to map both local and seasonally transhumant movements in the desert. Semantic network analyses and visibility analyses will be used to explore how the inscriptions spatially relate to each other and demonstrate whether the cultural landscape contains visible conceptual reference points of related inscription topics.

Education

• BA, Ancient Languages, UCL, 2019

• PGDip, Archaeology and Heritage, University of Leicester, 2022

• MA, Archaeology, Durham University, 2023