This is the second volume outlining the findings of excavations in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: it presents the longest and best preserved statified occupation of the second half of the fourth millenium BC (EB IA and EB IB) at Tel Um Hammad in the central Jordan valley. These new excavations give the first comprehensive set of ceramic, lithic, architectural and stratigraphic data for the period, which is seen as the prelude to the first urban' stage in the southern Levant. This book attempts to explain the historical processes that took place between the village economies of the Chalcolithic period and the full' Early Bronze Age.