Work, Workshops and Markets in Nabataean Communities

Nabataean settlements depended on people who grew food, tended animals, shaped clay, cut stone and moved goods between places. The famous monuments of Petra and Hegra required skilled labour, while houses and road stations needed regular supplies of less conspicuous things: cooking pots, fuel, grain, water and replacement equipment.

Excavated workshops, tools, inscriptions and rubbish deposits connect these tasks with particular workplaces. They also show how occupations depended on one another. Potters needed prepared clay and firing fuel; masons worked for patrons who commissioned buildings or tombs; travellers consumed food brought from farms and markets. At Petra, residential terraces and monumental buildings preserve several parts of this working economy.

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Potters and the production of useful vessels

Potters made a range of vessels for storing, cooking, serving and lighting. The thin painted bowls associated with Nabataean fineware demanded especially careful preparation. Fine clay allowed the maker to raise an even wall on the wheel; drying then had to preserve the shape before firing hardened it. Some surviving bowls have walls only about 1.5 millimetres thick.

Working on the wheel involved coordinating rotation with pressure from the hands. The potter controlled the profile while keeping the clay centred. Handles, rims or decoration required additional operations, depending on the product. Making a recognisable type repeatedly was a skill useful to a workshop supplying customers with vessels for familiar tasks.

Painted decoration added another stage. Dark leaf and flower patterns were arranged on light or reddish bodies. Examination of a painted example has identified hematite, an iron-oxide pigment. The potter’s firing conditions affected both the body and the decoration, so fuel and air management were part of producing a successful finished vessel.

Kilns and workshop remains near Wadi Musa connect these products with production around Petra. A kiln concentrated heat around a batch of vessels, converting soft clay into ceramics that could withstand repeated handling. Preparing materials, shaping pots, decorating selected wares and firing them made production a sequence of coordinated tasks.

Masons, carvers and commissions

Building and rock carving called for different forms of stonework. Constructed buildings required suitable blocks, preparation of their surfaces and assembly into walls, columns or arches. A rock-cut monument was made by removing material from a cliff, leaving the intended façade in place and excavating the space behind it.

At Hegra, tool marks and surviving façades show successive levels of work. Picks removed larger amounts of sandstone; pointed and flat chisels refined surfaces and details. The carver had to respond to the quality and layers of the rock, particularly where projecting elements would remain exposed.

Tomb inscriptions sometimes name the maker. The monument commissioned by Kamkam and her daughter Kulaybat around the turn of the Common Era identifies Wahballahi, son of Abdobodat. This is a direct connection between a named worker, a patron’s commission and a surviving building. The tomb’s legal provisions also show why the family invested in it: it secured a burial place for people entitled to use it.

Carving could range from the rough excavation of a chamber to the fine treatment of capitals and reliefs. Preparing a monumental front therefore involved planning, labour and finishing skills. The material left in place mattered as much as the stone removed, because a mistake could damage a feature that could not simply be replaced like a separate block.

Workshops within the city

Crafts were also carried on among the buildings of residential districts. Excavations at Petra’s ez-Zantur terraces identified a bronze workshop used in the first century CE and destroyed around its end. Its presence places metalworking within a neighbourhood otherwise known for houses. Work and residence could be close together in the urban landscape.

The terraces also had a much grander house with kitchens, reception rooms and a service wing. Supporting its occupants and guests required labour in preparation, cleaning, fuel provision and the movement of food through the building. The plan connected service rooms with areas where visitors were received, giving everyday work a place within an elaborate household.

Painted plaster and shaped stucco added further skills to building projects. Stucco is plaster modelled into raised ornament. At ez-Zantur, painted and plastered decoration could imitate masonry and architectural openings. The appearance of a finished room depended on these surface treatments as well as on the structural work beneath them.

Farmers, herders and seasonal work

Agricultural work supplied both local residents and people passing through. Farmers grew cereals and pulses and maintained orchards where water and climate allowed them. Wheat and barley required sowing, harvesting, separation from stalks and husks, and cleaning before storage or sale. Olive cultivation added pruning and harvesting, followed by crushing and pressing when oil was the intended product.

Date orchards were particularly important at Hegra and in oasis communities near the Dead Sea. Date palms produce male and female flowers on separate trees. Hand pollination involved taking pollen from male flowers to female clusters, while harvesting required reaching fruit high on the palm. Irrigation and care between harvests kept the orchard productive.

The Babatha archive records date-orchard ownership and harvest sales at Maoza, a village south of the Dead Sea. Some documents belong to the Nabataean kingdom and others to Roman government after 106. They show cultivated land producing income that could be transferred, lent against or claimed in a dispute. The crop linked physical work with ownership and commercial agreements.

Herding complemented cultivation. Sheep and goats could supply meat and other products, while their movement required access to grazing and water. Animal bones in settlement and road-station rubbish connect the pastoral economy with the food consumed in those places. Supplying a town involved several growing and grazing areas.

Caravan labour and roadside supply

The movement of goods required the handling of animals, loads and provisions. A pack animal had to be loaded securely, directed along a usable route and given access to water and fodder. Travellers also needed food and equipment for their own journey. Roadside settlements served this demand as well as the movement of merchandise.

At Neqarot on the Petra–Gaza route, a residential building used in the late first century BCE and early first century CE had a nearby rubbish deposit containing pottery, lamps, glass and food remains. Grain, fruit stones and sheep and goat bones place ordinary consumption beside the transport route. Mediterranean clam shells show that even food from a distant coast reached the station.

Later road stations continued to receive provisions under Roman rule. Their inhabitants and visitors needed cooking, storage and resting space, while imported food and vessels connected them with suppliers beyond the desert. The work sustaining a journey extended from growers and traders to the people maintaining a stopping place.

Sales, documents and the value of goods

Markets connected the things people made or grew with buyers who needed them. Repeated forms of pottery served recognisable household purposes, while an orchard harvest could be sold under a written agreement. These transactions differed in scale, but both depended on a product being usable and on arrangements for its transfer.

Documents were particularly valuable for transactions whose consequences continued over time. A deed identified an orchard and its owner; a loan recorded a repayment obligation; a harvest contract converted a season’s produce into an agreed commercial return. Scribes and witnesses helped give these agreements a durable form.