This paper presents a summary of work undertaken by the authors and their teams on a series of Qe'an (plural of Qa’), in the Badia of eastern Jordan. These basins are a foci for settlement in the region, with the sites described here (Shubayqa, Wisad and the Qa’ Qattafi) edged by archaeological sites dating from the late Epipalaeolithic (ca. 14,500 - 11,600 cal BP) and the Neolithic (ca. 11,700 - 6100 cal BP), and in areas still used by people today as seasonal wetlands for watering animals and growing cereal. We assess here the potential for the Qe'an sediments to provide what would be rare continuous palaeoenvironmental records for this part of SW Asia.

The paper presents the first dates from the Qe'an of this region and the outline sedimentology. Much of the fill is of Holocene age, which leads to discussion of climate and landscape change over the last 15,000 years, particularly due to the close geographical relationship between these basins and archaeology. Our optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon dating of the basin fill suggests that there was significantly more space in the landscape for water storage in the early Holocene, which may have therefore provided this resource for people and their livestock or game for a longer duration each year than that seen today. Linked to this are hypotheses of a more vegetated landscape during this time period. Given the environmentally marginal nature of our study area subtle changes in landscape and/or climate, and human exploitation of these resources, could have led to significant, and likely detrimental for its inhabitants, environmental impacts for the region, such as desertification. Our data are suggestive of desertification occurring, and sets up a clear hypothesis for testing by future work in the region.

本文总结了作者及其团队在约旦东部巴迪亚的一系列 Qe'an（Qa' 的复数形式）上所做的工作。这些盆地是该地区的聚居地，这里描述的遗址（舒巴卡、维萨德和 Qa' Qattafi）的边缘是考古遗址，可追溯到上旧石器时代晚期（约 14,500 - 11,600 cal BP）和新石器时代（约公元前 10,000 年）。 11,700 - 6100 cal BP），以及今天人们仍然使用的季节性湿地，用于给动物浇水和种植谷物。我们在这里评估了 Qe'an 沉积物为亚洲西南部的这一部分提供罕见的连续古环境记录的潜力。

本文介绍了该地区秦始皇的最早年代和沉积学概况。大部分填充物属于全新世时代，这导致了对过去 15,000 年气候和景观变化的讨论，特别是由于这些盆地和考古学之间的密切地理关系。我们对盆地填充物的光学受激发光和放射性碳测年表明，在全新世早期，景观中有更多的储水空间，因此可能为人类及其牲畜或游戏提供这种资源的时间比每年更长。今天看到的。与此相关的是在此期间植被更加丰富的假设。鉴于我们研究区域的环境边缘性质，景观和/或气候的细微变化，和人类对这些资源的开发，可能会导致对该地区的环境产生重大的、可能对该地区有害的影响，例如荒漠化。我们的数据表明荒漠化正在发生，并为该地区未来的工作进行测试建立了明确的假设。