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Excavations at a rock shelter in eastern Jordan have provided new evidence for exploitation of the dry. steppe about the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.E. The findings of the el-Ḥibr excavations, together with a growing corpus of evidence from elsewhere regarding the presence of human populations in the semiarid zones of the Near and Middle East, provide material for a discussion of the nature of relations between "desert and sown" in that period. Analyses of the excavated material and data from a major survey program in the region (The Burquϲ/Ruweishid Project) suggest that groups using the deep steppe in the fourth millennium B.C.E. were nomadic, with a mixed, multiresource economy, in contact with discrete areas within the verdant zones. It is cautiously suggested that such evidence can be used to explore the origins of state-tribe relations that characterize the history of the Near and Middle East in later periods, up to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]