Earliest evidence for the use of desert kite mass-hunting structures in southeastern Jordan during the late pre-pottery neolithic B

Desert kites – large-scale stone structures used for mass game hunting – are among the most extensive prehistoric constructions in the Middle East. Despite their ubiquity, the chronology of their emergence has long remained unresolved. This study presents the earliest direct and robust evidence for the construction and use of desert kites, based on integrated radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of three kites from a single chain in Jibal al-Khashabiyeh, southeastern Jordan. Excavations focused on the cell-like features around kite enclosures, revealed to be deep pit-traps. Bayesian modeling of 28 dates (10 radiocarbon, 18 OSL) places the highest probabilities of construction of these structures firmly within the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (LPPNB), during the second half of the 8th mill. cal BCE. These findings firmly place kite use as a parallel, indigenous developments in the arid east roughly coinciding with the inhabitation of large agro-pastoralist settlements in the Jordanian highlands to the west, reflecting the mosaicked nature of Neolithic developments that characterized the southern Levant already for two millennia. They support a model of indigenous development by highly organized hunter-forager groups inhabiting the arid margins of the southern Levant. The scale, planning, and ecological knowledge embedded in kite architecture produced food in abundance while also supporting novel forms of social organization. The results reposition desert kites as a distinct form of early landscape modification and hunting architecture. The Jibal al-Khashabiyeh data thus anchor a transformative hunting tradition in deep time, offering a new lens on Neolithic innovation beyond the “Fertile Crescent” core.