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Archaeological and geophysical prospection of the site of Khirbat as-Sar (Sara) in Jordan, carried out by a team from the Polish Centre of the Mediterranean Archaeology (PCMA), University of Warsaw, has resulted in a comprehensive plan mapping all visible architectural remains. A Roman-period sacred compound appears to be a central feature of this site. Pottery collected from the surface has given a time range for the settlement from the late Iron Age through the Mamluk period. The electrical resistivity method using a probe array that allowed ground penetration to a maximum depth of approximately 1.50 m revealed meaningful information on the spatial organization of the site. Numerous high-resistance anomalies were interpreted as a reflection of building remains.

Excavations in the North-West Church yielded numerous fragments of plain and painted wall plaster, which suggest that the entire interior of the church was plastered, and in large part, decorated with wall paintings. The majority of painted remains were discovered in the martyrion chapel and in the diakonikon. This paper describes the findings and addresses the following questions: to what extent was the church painted; what did the paintings represent; were these paintings aniconic; what are the characteristic features of the technique of execution of these paintings; do these paintings belong to a single phase of decoration of the church?