The overall research objective of the Madaba Plains Project has been to illuminate the multi-millennial cycles of intensification and abatement in human settlement and land use in the greater Madaba Plains region. To this end, research continues to focus on discovering further details about their nature, particularly with reference to those which occurred during the third, second and first millennia B.C.E. (= B.C.); on uncovering more about their causes and consequences; and on understanding the course of their unfolding through time. To this point, ten seasons of excavation and survey have taken place at Tall al-`Umayri and vicinity in Jordan (1984, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004). The site is located ca. 15 km south of Jordan's capital city, Amman, along the main highway to the airport. See Hisban and Jalul for results at these Madapa Plains Project sites.

           According to a list of cities from the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III, the biblical name for Tall al-`Umayri was perhaps Abel Keramim, mentioned in Judges 11:33 (a scarab-seal impression with Thutmose's name was found by the excavations in 1987). During the biblical period the Ammonites apparently controlled the city, making it an administrative center near their southern border with the Moabites. A seal impression, found by the team in 1984, mentions a prominent official of the Ammonite government who served King Baalis in the time of the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 40:14).