[4] There are a number of tower-like structures on the plateaus of central Jordan, which were interpreted as "Ammonite towers" in the sense of border forts by Nelson Glueck in 1939, but are more recently considered to have fulfilled a variety of purposes across many historical periods, mainly of an agricultural and residential nature.

However, Yassine (1988) quotes Langer de Polacky, who did additional work at the site after Boraas but didn't publish it, and who claimed to have found 6th-5th-century BCE pottery in the lower levels of the tower.

[4] Based on the majority of the pottery findings across all known similar buildings, Kletter felt confident to date the entire category to the Assyrian period at the end of the Iron Age, i.e. to ca.

[5] He saw as possible that they served a defensive purpose, but noticed that their location and design speaks against a centralised (royal) project of creating military forts; he saw it as more likely that they could have offered shelter to local people.

[5] Kletter also noticed the similarity with the noterot, "stone huts" from Cisjordan/the West Bank, which were used by farmers during harvest time, while also boasting thick walls and rising up to 8 metres high.

[5] Kletter saw large "Rujm el-Malfuf buildings" as settlements inhabited by an extended family or small clan, also offering some protection in times of danger.

[5] While aware of the incompleteness of survey data, he ventured to place them all within a territory of similar climatic and topographic conditions (over 200 mm of rain per year, on the plateau above the Jordan Valley and west of the desert), and between what he saw as Ammon's boundaries toward Assyrian Gilead to the north and Moab to the south.