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Archaeologists commonly include climatic data in their analyses of living in the past, but rarely do current weather conditions achieve mention in our professional considerations. The Kites in Context Project (KiC) focuses on a multi-scalar investigation of desert kites in the eastern badia region of Jordan. During the Neolithic (7000–5000 b.c.) period, people began building large animal traps, known as desert kites, across a wide swath of southwestern Asia. This multi-year project is designed to provide novel insights into the chronology and function of these animal traps through an intensive study incorporating remote sensing with boots-on-the-ground excavation and survey. The 2023 season began like any other—a combination of aerial survey using drones, walking the landscape in a pedestrian survey, and excavation under sunny skies. During our 2023 field season in Jordan, we experienced dramatic, atypical weather, likely driven by climate change. In this photo essay, we present images from this surprising rain and flooding event in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan that caused us to consider on a more personal level the challenges that may have faced the hunters and herders who constructed the kites and who managed the water thousands of years ago. 

This paper presents the results of a large scale, drone-based aerial survey in northeastern Jordan. Drones have rapidly become one of the most cost-effective and efficient tools for collecting high-resolution landscape data, fitting between larger-scale, lower-resolution satellite data collection and the significantly more limited traditional terrestrial survey approaches. Drones are particularly effective in areas where anthropogenic features are visible on the surface but are too small to identify with commonly and economically available satellite data. Using imagery from fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, along with photogrammetric processing, we surveyed an extensive archaeological landscape spanning 32 km2 at the site of Wadi al-Qattafi in the eastern badia region of Jordan, the largest archaeological drone survey, to date, in Jordan. The resulting data allowed us to map a wide range of anthropogenic features, including hunting traps, domestic structures, and tombs, as well as modern alterations to the landscape including road construction and looting pits. We documented thousands of previously unrecorded and largely unknown prehistoric structures, providing an improved understanding of major shifts in the prehistoric use of this landscape.