In this major work Professor MacDonald chronicles an intensive and systematic archaeological survey of the southern flank of the Wadi el Hasa in West–Central Jordan. The survey resulted in the recovery of human evidence spanning the Lower Paleolithic to the Ottoman period (500,000 B.C.–A.D. 1918). The area is cut by a number of impressive and deep, south–to–north flowing wadis. As a region marginal for farming but stable for grazing, it would be the first to “empty out” and the last to “fill up” compared to more favourable regions. The methodology employed included a combination of purposive, predictive, and pedestrian transects. Lithics spanning the Lower Paleolithic to the end of the Early Bronze period (500,000–2000 B.C.) and ceramics covering the period from the Pottery Neolithic to the end of the Ottoman domination (4750 B.C.–A.D. 1918) were collected in the area. Sites surveyed included lithic and sherd scatters, camps, hamlets, villages, roads, milestones, fortresses, watchtowers, and mills. This research sheds new light on the settlement of the area, which now appears to have been most dense during the Middle Paleolithic, Iron II, Nabataean, and Byzantine periods.

Over 100 archaeological sites lying within the desert area of Rome's eastern frontier are examined with accompanying maps, plans and air photographs. Designed to provide an overview of Roman military works in the Middle East, this work is intended to appeal to archaeologists and military historians.

Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century is devoted to frontier studies and to the structures of the Arab federates of Byzantium. It deals mainly with the Ghassanids of Oriens in the sixth century, a time of transition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The focus of this study is on the military, religious, and civil structures of the Ghassanids. The detailed study of these buildings contributes to our understanding of Byzantine provincial art and architecture in Oriens, as they were adopted by the federate Arabs and later adapted to their own use. As monuments of Christian architecture, these federate structures constitute the missing link in the development of Arab architecture in the region--the link between the earlier pagan (Nabataean and Palmyrene) and later Muslim (Umayyad).