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Arabia covers an area in excess of 2.5 million sq km. It is bounded on the west by the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea , on the south by the Arabian Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman . Arabia’s northern bound-ary is less clear-cut, its arid landscape merging into the Mesopotamian alluvium and the Syrian Desert . This chap-ter focuses exclusively upon the prehistory of the Arabian Peninsula, that is, the modern countries of Saudi Arabia , Kuwait , Bahrain , Qatar , the United Arab Emirates (UAE) , Oman and Yemen , in the period from the Early Holocene to the 1st millennium BCE .

Geography and Climate

The Arabian Peninsula displays signifi cant geographical vari-ability that was fundamental to prehistoric human settlement in the region. The peninsula contains a number of highland areas, including the Western Escarpment or ‘Asir Mountains running parallel to the Red Sea coast of Arabia and their con-tinuation – the Yemen Highlands – which reach elevations in excess of 3600 masl and are cut by valleys draining to the southern and western coasts of Yemen and to the interior des-ert of the Ramlat as-Sab’atayn . In Southeast Arabia, the 600 km-long arc of the Al-Hajjar Mountains reaches 2980 masl at the Jebel Akhdar . Away from the mountainous highlands, the interior of Arabia is characterised by a series of major des-erts which cover roughly one-third of the peninsula, includ-ing the stony Harra and the sandy Great Nafud deserts in the north and the great sand sea of the Rub’ al-Khali in the south. The general aridity of the region is refl ected in the fact that modern Arabia has no permanent lakes or rivers. Modern rainfall varies substantially with topography and lati-tude. Although most areas of the peninsula receive less than 150 mm of rainfall annually, this fi gure varies from as low as 25 mm in the Rub’ al-Khali to around 1000 mm in restricted parts of highland Yemen. Rainfall is strongly seasonal and interannual variability is high. The limited rainfall in more northerly parts of the peninsula is ameliorated by the ready availability of water from large subterranean aquifers, which

are particularly abundant in eastern Arabia along the Persian Gulf coast. Finally, Arabia possesses in excess of 15,000 km of coastline, with rocky coastal plains, harbours, beaches, lagoons and salt fl ats ( sabkhas ) as well as coral reefs and hun-dreds of (mostly small) islands in the Red Sea, Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. Prehistoric occupation and exploitation of the Arabian landscape encompassed all of these geographical zones, representing a series of unique human adaptations to Arabia’s diverse environments.

Holocene Climate and Environment

Palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental research in the Arabian Peninsula incorporates studies of relict lakes, palaeosols, speleothems, dune fi elds and wadi drainages, as well as marine sediment cores from the waters surround-ing Arabia ( e.g., Parker et al . 2006a , 2006b ; Parker & Rose 2008 ; L é zine 2007 ). These studies indicate extremely arid conditions at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM ) , c. 16,000 BCE , which gave way to an Early Holocene climatic optimum from c. 8000–4000 BCE . This period coincided with the wide-spread appearance of (now relict) lakes across the Arabian Peninsula , occurring in interdunal parts of desert areas from the Nafud in the north to the Rub’ al-Khali and the Wahiba Sands in the south, as well as in the Dhamar region of high-land Yemen (Parker & Goudie 2007 : 463–4). Arabia’s Early Holocene moist phase seems to have resulted principally from a northerly shift in the Indian Ocean Monsoon (IOM ) – reaching 25 ° N by c. 7000 BCE – and a southern shift in the pattern of rain-bearing westerlies from the Mediterranean region (Drechsler 2009 : 29).

The period from c. 4000 to 2000 BCE was one of steadily increasing aridity marked by, among other events, the disap-pearance of Rub’ al-Khali lakes and of fresh water-dependent mangrove species ( Rhizophora ) at c. 2500 BP in eastern Oman, most likely as a result of a southward regression of the IOM. The palaeoclimatic evidence from highland and coastal Southwest Arabia largely parallels that from eastern Arabia, showing increasing aridity from c. 3000 to 2500 BCE , albeit

3.12 ARABIA LLOYD WEEKS

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with “pulses” of wetness (Parker et al. 2006b ). Within these general trends, periods of relatively rapid climate change can be observed in the palaeoclimatic record of Arabia, including potentially signifi cant arid “events” in the late 7th and late 3rd millennia BCE . From around 2000 BCE , near-modern climatic conditions were established.

A critical aspect of changing environment in the Arabian Peninsula relates to rapid sea-level rise in the Late Quaternary. At the LGM , average global sea levels were c. 120 m lower than the present day. While this had a lim-ited effect on the exposure of coastal shelf on the west-ern and southern coasts of Arabia, its effects in Northeast Arabia were dramatic. The modern Persian Gulf is a very shallow sea, with an average depth of only c. 35 m and a maximum depth of a little over 100 m. At the LGM, the Persian Gulf was not a standing body of water, but rather

a marshy river valley with sporadic small lakes, represent-ing the continuation of the conjoined Tigris-Euphrates rivers, running from the modern-day head of the Gulf all the way to the Straits of Hormuz (Rose 2010 ; Parker & Rose 2008 ). The significance of such a rich environment for early human populations has recently been emphasised by Rose ( 2010 ), who envisions the region as a “Gulf Oasis” from which human groups expanded into Arabia during climatic optima, and to which they retreated during peri-ods of climatic deterioration. Unfortunately, any evidence for Early Holocene human presence in the area was lost with the relatively rapid, progressive SE–NW infilling of the Persian Gulf beginning c. 12,000 BCE and ending c. 4000 BCE , when sea levels were 1–2 m higher than present day. In the last six thousand years, sea levels in the Gulf have fluctuated less radically, and shorelines have, with

MAP 3.12.1. Map of Arabia.

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some exceptions, approximated those of modern times (Lambeck 1996 ).

Early Holocene Hunter-Gatherers in Arabia (c. 9000–6500 BCE )

The Palaeolithic of Arabia has received increasing attention in recent times, due largely to its potential signifi cance in discus-sions of a southern dispersal route for human groups from Africa ( e.g., Armitage et al . 2011 ; Rose 2010 ; Petraglia & Rose 2009 ). The occupation of Arabia by hunter-gatherer groups from the Lower Palaeolithic was clearly documented in the western Arabian Peninsula by the Saudi comprehensive sur-veys of the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently the existence of Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites in eastern Arabia has been confi rmed (Rose 2010 ; Uerpmann et al. 2009 ).

Although continuity of human occupation from Pleistocene to Holocene Arabia has not yet been demonstrated, there is growing evidence for archaeological sites in southern Arabia dated to the fi rst quarter of the Holocene. These include Wadi Wutayya in Oman, radiocarbon dated to the 10th to 9th millen-nium BCE, and Khabarut 1 in Yemen, as well as sites in Yemen, Oman and the UAE characterised by “Fasad points” and dat-able to the 9th–8th millennium BCE ( Fig. 3.12.1 ). Other poten-tial Early Holocene sites include those in Yemen characterised by “Wash’ah points” and contemporary sites in Dhofar such as Jebel al-Qara (Charpentier 2008 ; Crassard 2008 ; Drechsler 2009 ; Rose 2010 ; Uerpmann et al. 2009 ).

The cultural affi nities and subsistence practices of Arabia’s Early Holocene populations remain debated. There is little primary evidence for the subsistence base of the occupants of these sites, most of which are unstratifi ed lithic surface scatters. While Drechsler ( 2009 : fi g. 1) labels these sites as “Late Palaeolithic” and Charpentier ( 2008 : 109) describes them as representing “hunter-gatherer societies of the early Holocene”, Fedele ( 2008 ) has suggested that the label “Mesolithic” may be more appropriate for pre-Neolithic communities in highland Southwest Arabia who appear to have been hunting wild cattle and gazelle. The coastal loca-tion of many of these sites suggests that marine resources were also being exploited by Early Holocene communities of Arabia. In contrast, Uerpmann et al. ( 2009 ) have labelled Fasad sites as “Neolithic”, regarding the Fasad points as reminiscent of Qatar B artifacts and “Byblos points” of the PPNB Levant. Although Drechsler ( 2009 : 17, 161) specifi -cally denies such a typological link, both recognise the pos-sibility that the limited Early Holocene human occupation in southern Arabia represents the northward expansion of relict hunter-gatherer-fi sher populations from the southernmost margins of the Arabian Peninsula , with the onset of improved climatic conditions in the Early Holocene moist phase (see also Carter 2010 ).

Neolithic Arabia (c. 6500–3100 BCE )

The archaeological conception of “Neolithic” Arabia has undergone a substantial revision over the course of the last decade. Earlier reconstructions tended to regard the increas-ing presence of humans in central and southern Arabia in the second quarter of the Holocene as evidence for the continued spread of hunter-gatherer groups due to improved climatic conditions. An abundance of arrowheads in lithic assemblages and the limited evidence for any of the defi ning characteristics of Neolithic life in the Fertile Crescent – animal husbandry, agriculture, substantial sedentary villages – supported such a view and suggested that labels such as “Late Stone Age” ( e.g., Uerpmann 1992 ) were more appropriate for these communi-ties. However, more recent research has highlighted the almost universal utilisation of domesticated sheep, goats and/or cattle at these sites (Uerpmann et al . 2009 ; Drechsler 2009 : tab. 1; Martin et al . 2009 ), and the Early to Mid-Holocene occupants of the Arabian Peninsula are now widely regarded as mobile herders who supplemented their productive animal econ-omy with hunted and gathered resources from terrestrial and marine environments. Their designation as “Neolithic” socie-ties is based upon this critical feature of domesticated animal exploitation, although it is also possible (if undemonstrated) that the date palm was cultivated by Arabian Neolithic com-munities as early as the 5th millennium BCE (Beech & Shepherd 2001 ).

The earliest Neolithic herding groups in the Arabian Peninsula are represented by the presence of “Qatar B”–type lithic industries, incorporating a blade-based technology and especially blade arrowheads with limited reworking. Sites with Qatar B industries are known from northern and central Arabia as far south as the Qatar Peninsula and the Hofuf and Jabrin oases in eastern Saudi Arabia. Drechsler ( 2009 : fi g. 1) labels these Qatar-B sites as the “Northern Arabian Early Neolithic”. Signifi cantly, Qatar B sites have been related, through lithic parallels, to the PPNB of the Levant. Given the unlikelihood of indigenous domestication of sheep (and to a lesser extent of goats and cattle) in the Arabian Peninsula , the earliest Neolithic settlement of northern and central Arabia has been reconstructed as resulting from the movement of pastoral groups from the Mediterranean zone into Arabia, due to pop-ulation pressure in the source region and Arabia’s improved Early Holocene environment (Drechsler 2009 ; Uerpmann et al . 2009 ).

The elements of the characteristic, indigenous, Arabian Neolithic were formulated in the very last centuries of the 7th millennium BCE . Drechsler ( 2009 : 152) argues that this devel-opment may refl ect interaction between herding groups of the Northern Arabian Early Neolithic and hunter-gatherers of southern Arabia, promoted by aridifi cation and the retreat of hunting and herding groups to shared environmental refu-gia. There are, however, competing models that allow for mul-tiple stages and directions of infl uence on the early Neolithic communities of Arabia, including input from populations in

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southern Arabia (Carter 2010 ) and the now-fl ooded regions of the Persian Gulf (Rose 2010 ). These newly emergent “Middle Neolithic” communities are present from c. 6000 BCE in all environments of the Arabian Peninsula – coastal, inland, highland – and evince distinct lithic industries related to

adaptations to these varied local environments. Middle Neo-lithic lithic industries were originally ascribed to the “Arabian Bifacial Tradition” (ABT, fi rst summarised by Edens 1982 ), characterised particularly by the presence of barbed and tanged arrowheads and other forms with extensive bifacial retouch.

FIGURE 3.12.1. Early and Mid-Holocene lithics from the Arabian Peninsula. Top row: Fasad points; middle row: trihedral points; bottom row: fusiform foliated points. Fasad points not to scale (after Charpentier 2008 : fi gs. 2, 4, 5).

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Regional variations of the ABT have now been well documented for the southern Arabian Peninsula ( e.g., Edens 1988 ; Uerpmann 1992 ; Spoor 1997 ; Drechsler 2009 ) – including, for example, distinct chronological “facies” in Southeast Arabia defi ned by specifi c types and reduction technologies including “trihedral points” and “fusiform foliated points” (Charpentier 2008 ) and industries in highland Yemen where the proportion of foliates is very limited (Fedele 2008 ) ( Fig. 3.12.1 ).

The Middle Neolithic site of Wadi at-Tayyilah 3 (WTH3) in Yemen provides good evidence for the nature of Neolithic set-tlement in the highlands at this time, which exploited climatic amelioration in the period from c. 6000 BCE and the presence of woodland vegetation, higher water tables and scattered standing ponds/lakes in upland settings. The Neolithic settle-ment at WTH3 comprised enclosure alignments and about six elliptical huts built of unworked stone, with upper walls and roofs made of organic material as well as light structures, dif-fi cult to identify, built entirely of wood or other organic mate-rials (Fedele 2008 : 159–62). The local focus on cattle herding appears to have developed in response to the wetter conditions of highland southwestern Arabia. Fedele ( 2008 : 167) also points to links between Neolithic cattle pastoralism in high-land Southwest Arabia and early animal husbandry across the Red Sea in the Ethiopian Highlands and the Horn of Africa , suggesting additional infl uences on the development of the Arabian Neolithic that were neither indigenous nor of Near Eastern origin.

The period from c. 6000 BCE also witnessed a dramatic increase in sites known from the Persian Gulf coast, no doubt partly as a result of the near-modern sea levels achieved at around this time and the fl ooding of earlier remains. Rose ( 2010 : 850, fi g. 5), for example, suggests that such settlements were founded by the indigenous population of the “Gulf Oasis” that was displaced by the rising waters of the Gulf. These sites are characterised, for the most part, by deposits attesting to short-term seasonal occupation aimed at the exploitation of marine resources in addition to animal husbandry. However, some sites attest to longer term and more permanent occupation, for example, Dosariyah on the eastern Saudi littoral, which exceeds 1 ha in area and has multiple superimposed occupation layers. Also characteristic of these sites is the presence of imported Mesopotamian pottery of the ‘Ubaid tradition, which can be found in large amounts (sometimes thousands of sherds) on sites including Abu Khamis , Dosariyah , Dalma Island in west-ern Abu Dhabi, and inland as far as Ain Qannas in the al-Hasa Oasis (Carter 2006 : fi g. 1; Drechsler 2011). ‘Ubaid pottery was traded on, most likely within local Persian Gulf exchange sys-tems, as far as coastal sites in the northern UAE (Haerinck 1991; Uerpmann & Uerpmann 1996). Particularly interesting in this context is the site of H3 in Kuwait, which is characterised by “a mixed material culture, combining elements typical of the Arabian Neolithic and the southern Mesopotamian ’Ubaid” (Carter 2006 : 53), and which produced evidence for seagoing boats in the form of a ceramic model of a reed-built boat, a painted disc showing a sailing boat, and dozens of fragments of bituminous amalgam with reed impressions and barnacle encrustations from the coating of reed-bundle boats (Carter &

Crawford 2010). Although the ‘Ubaid pottery was intrusive on sites that were culturally representative of the Arabian Middle Neolithic, Carter ( 2006 ) suggests that this material is not just the residue of interactions between Mesopotamian seafarers and local Neolithic communities in the Persian Gulf, but was actively sought by Arabian communities, locally exchanged, occasionally imitated in gypsum plaster, and used in contexts of status display such as feasting. Possible items exchanged for the ‘Ubaid pottery include pearls (attested at numerous sites; Charpentier et al . 2012), shell jewellery, fl int, or processed marine resources such as dried fi sh.

In Southeast Arabia, evidence in particular from the Neolithic burial site of Buhais -18 in the interior of the UAE has demon-strated the existence of a mobile herding strategy that incorpo-rated movements to the coast in the cooler winter months, to the western piedmont of the al-Hajjar Mountains in spring, and to the mountains during the hot summer months. Al-Buhais-18 and neighbouring sites are also critical for our understanding of Neolithic burial practices and beliefs in Southeast Arabia. More than six hundred inhumations attest to complex rituals involving primary, secondary and sometimes multiple burials of children, adolescents and adults, generally oriented with the head to the east (Kutterer 2010 ). Primary burials were typi-cally accompanied by elaborate jewellery including necklaces, bracelets, anklets, belts and headdresses made of shell, stone, carnelian and pearl. Later Neolithic burials at 4th-millennium BCE Ra’s al-Hamra , on the Omani coast, likewise attest elabo-rate burial traditions, where inhumations were accompanied by skulls and shells of the green sea turtle, as well as a range of artifacts that Charpentier & M é ry ( 2010 ) regard as evidence of funerary banquets, markers of group identity, and indicators of a limited degree of social inequality or hierarchy among the living.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Arabian Middle Neolithic ended rather abruptly in eastern Arabia and the coastal UAE at or just after 4000 BCE , and very few sites are known on the Persian Gulf shores during the 4th millennium BCE . Likewise, the abundant evidence for earlier contact with Mesopotamia proclaimed by the ‘Ubaid pottery gives way to an almost total lack of Uruk-related material in the 4th mil-lennium BCE (Potts 1990 : ch. 3). The dramatic change in the eastern Arabian settlement evidence correlates with the well-documented climate aridifi cation from 4000 BCE , and it has been suggested that a reduced Late Neolithic population may have been concentrated in coastal areas of Arabia offering environmental diversity and the potential for intensive exploi-tation of still-abundant marine resources. The archaeological evidence supports such a conclusion, as Late Neolithic (4th millennium BCE ) sites are well known from the eastern and southern coasts of Oman (Uerpmann 1992 ; Charpentier 2008 ). Nevertheless, there is some evidence from the Persian Gulf coast for marine exploitation in the 4th millennium BCE , where recent excavations at the site of Akab in the lagoon of Umm al-Qaiwain (UAE) indicate intensive dugong culling and ritual dugong bone deposition (M é ry et al . 2009 ). Contemporary communities likewise exploiting coastal environments are also attested in Yemen, specifi cally by the existence of shell

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middens on the Tihamah dated to the 4th millennium BCE , although faunal remains from these sites indicate a diverse subsistence base incorporating also hunted and domestic ani-mals (Edens & Wilkinson 1998 ).

A fi nal point of relevance to discussion of the Neolithic occupation of Arabia is the existence of a vast corpus of rock art throughout the peninsula ( e.g. , Khan 1993). While much of this material appears to have been produced from the Bronze Age to the more recent past, several sites in Saudi Arabia have been provisionally dated to the Early to Mid-Holocene and probably relate to the early Arabian Neolithic communities described above. Such sites provide a further indication of the extent of human movement over the Arabian Peninsula during the Neolithic and the nature of subsistence and social activities.

Bronze Age Arabia (c. 3200–13/1200 BCE )

The transition from the 4th to the 3rd millennium BCE in Arabia witnessed dramatic changes in society and subsistence econ-omy, as the herding and fi shing economies of the Neolithic were supplemented by and integrated with newly developed agricultural production strategies heralding the Bronze Age, in a process dubbed the “Great Transformation” by Cleuziou and Tosi ( 2007 ). This phase also witnessed a continuation and strengthening of the regional differentiation noted in Middle and Late Neolithic assemblages from Arabia: The trajectories of Bronze Age settlement in the central Persian Gulf region, Southeast Arabia (the Oman Peninsula) and Southwest Arabia were substantially different. The Persian Gulf region also peri-odically emerges into history from this time onwards, when Mesopotamian cuneiform sources document a variety of inter-cultural connections with the lands of Dilmun (the central Gulf region, especially Bahrain Island ) and Magan (the UAE and Oman, and possibly areas across the Straits of Hormuz in Iran). In the following sections, the Bronze Age archaeological records of Southwest Arabia, Southeast Arabia and the central Persian Gulf region are discussed in turn, followed by a sepa-rate section on the Bronze Age Persian Gulf exchange system. The evidence for Bronze Age occupation in Northwest Arabia – consisting largely of material from deep soundings at the oasis of Tayma in addition to examples of rock art – is very limited, and is discussed later in the section dealing with the Iron Age.

Bronze Age Southwest Arabia

The period from the late 4th millennium BCE witnesses sig-nifi cant increases in settlement size and differentiation in Southwest Arabia, the fi rst clear evidence for agriculture and the introduction to the region of pottery, the local or foreign origins of which remain uncertain. Bronze Age settlement in

Southwest Arabia has only very recently been discovered and reconstructed through archaeological research, beginning in the early 1980s with the work in the Khawlan region of high-land Yemen (east of Sana’a), and continuing with fi eldwork in the highland areas near Dhamar , on the desert fringes of the Ramlat as-Sabatayn , in the Hadhramaut and on Yemen’s Red Sea and Arabian Sea coastlines. Research in the Khwalan (Edens 1999 ) involved settlement surveys as well as small-scale excavations at a number of sites and outlined the general char-acteristics of Bronze Age settlements in the region; they are all less than 1 ha in total area and are built up from varying numbers of simple compounds. Each compound was c. 20 m across and comprised multiple curvilinear rooms – often dug into the ground surface – that were arranged around a cen-tral open courtyard space. Such compounds may have been occupied by three to four family groups. Radiocarbon dates and ceramic parallels allow the Khawlan sites to be dated to the period from c. 2800 to 1900 BCE (Edens 1999 : tab. 1), after which point there appears to be a cessation of occupation in the region that may have been the result of climate aridifi ca-tion, although Edens ( ibid.: 120) highlights the likelihood of 2nd-millennium BCE settlements nearby in the Hada area.

A different pattern has been reconstructed for the Dhamar highlands, where fi eld survey has recovered scores of Bronze Age sites suggesting a clear two-tiered settlement hierarchy: most sites are c. 1 ha or less, with a handful of larger sites up to 3 ha in extent (Edens 1999 : 123). The best-explored Bronze Age site in Dhamar is Hammat al-Qa , a 3–5 ha hilltop settlement radiocarbon dated from the early 3rd to the late 2nd millen-nium BCE ( ibid.: table 1). Although Hammat al-Qa is likely to have been home to only three hundred to fi ve hundred people, it has been argued that it exhibits several features characteris-tic of urban sites, including a surrounding wall with gates, a dense layout of rectilinear buildings and streets, and a possible division into quarters. Combined with the evidence for a settle-ment hierarchy, the developed Bronze Age societies of Dhamar appear to have exhibited a degree of social differentiation.

Contemporary Bronze Age sites are known from lower ele-vations on the edges of the Ramlat as-Sab’atayn , in the area of the later South Arabian kingdoms. Although the settlements have only been excavated in a very limited fashion, they show clear parallels with the Khawlan region (Cleuziou et al. 1992 : fi g. 6; Braemer et al. 2001 ). Additional evidence for occupation in the period from c. 2000 to 1400 BCE comes from the site of Shabwa , at the western end of the Wadi Hadhramaut , where excavations have revealed a deep occupational sequence show-ing a series of earth/mud-brick structures. Elsewhere, early to mid-2nd-millennium BCE settlement is recorded in a 6 m–deep occupational sequence at Ma’layba , near Aden on the south coast of Yemen. The settlement consisted of superimposed hut structures (indicated by post-holes), cultivated fi elds and irrigation channels that are well dated by radiocarbon to c. 2000 to 1300 BCE (Gorsdorf & Vogt 2001 ). The latest levels at Ma’layba are contemporary with the earliest occupation levels at the nearby site of Sabir , which dates between the 14th and 8th centuries BCE with a main occupation phase in the 12th cen-tury BCE . Although contemporary with sites elsewhere termed

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“Iron Age”, the excavators of Sabir argue that it represents the continuation and spectacular fl owering of Bronze Age settle-ment traditions in the large coastal region stretching from the Arabian Sea to the Tihamah Plain on the Red Sea. The site covers a vast area of c. 1 × 2 km, with a rich variety of highly differentiated architectural remains, including post-hole/hut structures that are comparable to those known from Ma’layba and that dominate the earliest layers of the site. However, from the 12th century BCE , mud-brick structures such as farmsteads and houses are documented, especially in the central parts of the site. Most impressively, the site hosts an extremely large monumental mud-brick complex, located within a walled precinct more than half a hectare in area (Vogt 2000 : fi g. 49). Additional remains include sanctuaries and craft workshops for the production of pottery (on an extraordinarily large scale) and bronze artifacts. The range of artifacts from Sabir , and in particular the abundance of bronze found there and at other coastal Bronze Age sites of the “Sabir/Sihi complex” in com-parison to the metal-poor inland Southwest Arabia, suggest that the material wealth of the coastal Bronze Age communities related to participation in maritime exchange systems focused on both shores of the southern Red Sea region (Edens & Wilkinson 1998 ).

As noted in this chapter, the Bronze Age witnesses the fi rst use of ceramics in Southwest Arabia. The region exhibits a substantial degree of chronological and geographical vari-ability in ceramic forms, wares and decoration. Edens ( 1999 ) notes widespread links between the Khawlan/Dhamar Bronze Age pottery sequences and those from the fringe of the Ramlat as-Sab’atayn to the east and the Tihamah coast to the west. In contrast, the Bronze Age pottery from Shabwa is different from that of the highlands, as is the material from Ma’laybah and Sabir near Aden. The origins of the Southwest Arabian Bronze Age pottery traditions remain uncertain. Edens and Wilkinson ( 1998 : 92) have suggested that the technology was probably introduced to Southwest Arabia, with general deco-rative parallels to Northeast African ceramics highlighting a possible source on the opposite shores of the Red Sea. For the later coastal Bronze Age, Vogt ( 2000 ) has noted a continuing African input into Southwest Arabian ceramic technology, in both decoration and technology of manufacture.

The subsistence basis of Southwest Arabian Bronze Age communities has been established through excavations at a range of sites, but is best known from the Khawlan and Dhamar regions in the highlands for the earlier Bronze Age, and from Sabir on the southern coast for the later Bronze Age. At Hammat al-Qa , animal exploitation was focused predomi-nantly upon sheep/goats, which represented 90% of the fau-nal assemblage, with cattle making up most of the remainder. Domesticated pigs and dogs are also known at highland Bronze Age sites, and hunting of wild equids and gazelle took place to a limited extent in the Khawlan region. At Sabir, the zoo-archaeological record of animal exploitation is supplemented by terra-cotta fi gurines depicting cattle, sheep and goats (Vogt 2000 ). Research in the Khawlan has reported agricultural practices built around wheat, barley, oats, sorghum, millet and dates, although, as these crops are mostly identifi ed from plant

impressions in pottery, and local pottery manufacture has not been proven, it is possible that crops were not cultivated in the Khawlan region. The presence of sorghum and millet indicates the possibility of both winter and summer cropping. At Sabir, the remarkably preserved botanical remains from storage ves-sels in the large mud-brick building (temple) of Area 5 rep-resent a broad range of fruits, grasses and woods for human consumption and medical use, for animal foddering and for building. Date palm cultivation is also suggested by the use of palm fronds in the construction of dwellings. Unsurprisingly, coastal Bronze Age sites of the Sabir/Sihi complex also witness the intensive exploitation of marine resources.

Aside from the high rainfall areas of the western highlands, agricultural production in Bronze Age Yemen would have depended upon irrigation. While the South Arabian kingdoms of the 1st millennium BCE are famous for their elaborate and large-scale fl oodwater irrigation systems (Wilkinson 2002 ), irrigation has a much longer pedigree in Southwest Arabia. By the 4th millennium BCE in the Hadhramaut , for example, simple channels were used to capture and divert run-off from hillslopes, which was distributed onto arable sediments using check dams (Harrower 2008 ). On the Arabian Sea coast at Ma’layba , irrigation channels have been excavated in levels radiocarbon dated to the early 2nd millennium BCE (Gorsdorf & Vogt 2001 ). In the highlands, irrigation systems were comple-mented by the use, from at least the 4th millennium BCE , of ter-raced agriculture relying predominantly on rainfall (Edens & Wilkinson 1998 ).

In addition to its record of human settlement and subsis-tence, the Southwest Arabian Bronze Age is also known for megalithic stone alignments that can be dated (with diffi -culty) as early as the 3rd millennium BCE . Excavations at the stone alignment of al-Midamman in the Tihamah ( Fig. 3.12.2 ) demonstrate the use of individual megaliths weighing up to 20 tonnes that must have been hauled overland more than 40 km from the nearest outcrops. Associated with the standing stones were the remains of child burials, possibly representing sacri-fi cial offerings, as well as a cache of artifacts including a large lump of obsidian and numerous copper tools with typological parallels as early as the 3rd millennium BCE (Keall 2010 ).

The Bronze Age burial traditions of Southwest Arabia are attested by the presence of elaborate stone-built mor-tuary architecture in many regions ( e.g., Braemer et al . 2001 ; Steimer-Herbet et al . 2006 ). These typically take the form of circular stone-built above ground tombs, the larger of which are known as “tower tombs”, which can be up to 5 m in diam-eter and stand several metres high, although a number of dif-ferent burial types are known including “wall tombs”. Tombs are reported in isolation, but more commonly occur in larger groups – sometimes thousands – forming cairn cemeteries. These structures held multiple burials with associated grave-goods including ceramics, bronzes, beads and animal bones, and are often associated with additional stone-built linear fea-tures or “tails” extending many metres away from the tomb,or otherwise located in its vicinity.

It has been argued that these burial monuments, known in their thousands from most parts of Southwest Arabia and sited

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in prominent locations in the landscape, were a focus for group identity and cultural reproduction among Bronze Age mobile pastoralist groups, perhaps during the process of sedentarisa-tion. An association between pastoralist occupation sites and tombs has recently been reported from Wadi Wash‘ah in the Hadhramaut (Steimer-Herbet et al . 2006 ). Based upon icono-graphic parallels for carvings on the tombs and a number of radiocarbon analyses, Southwest Arabia’s Bronze Age tombs can be dated to a broad range from the 4th to the 2nd millen-nium, although it is equally clear that they were also used in later periods, particularly in the 1st millennium BCE . The cairns of Southwest Arabia are part of a very widespread phenome-non of stone burial cairn building that characterised almost all regions of the Arabian Peninsula in the Bronze Age, from the “nawamis” and cairns of the Sinai Peninsula and Northwest Arabia to the tumuli of Bahrain and the Hafi t or “beehive” tombs of Oman. Although displaying signifi cant local varia-tions in form, construction and associated rituals, the under-lying similarities of this practice of monumental construction provide a tantalising glimpse of cultural connections between the communities of prehistoric Arabia.

Bronze Age Southeast Arabia (Ancient Magan)

After their initial discovery and investigation by Danish archae-ologists in the early 1960s, the elaborate cairn burials of the Jabal Hafi t near the Al Ain /Buraimi Oasis in the inland UAE were for a number of years the earliest known Bronze Age remains from Southeast Arabia. These circular cairn buri-als were up to 11 m in diameter and 5 m high and were built of unworked stone boulders. They incorporated a relatively small, corbelled central chamber, and a structural variant of this form, labelled the “beehive” type, included one or two

additional ring walls abutting the main structure (Potts 1990 : fi g. 8). Their original period of construction and use in the late 4th to early 3rd millennium BCE was established by the discovery of distinctive polychrome Jemdet Nasr pottery from Mesopotamia . Since these initial investigations, thousands of Hafi t tombs – which give their name to the earliest phase of the Bronze Age in Southeast Arabia, the “Hafi t Period” dated c. 3100 to 2700 BCE – have been found across the Oman Peninsula (Potts 1990 : fi g. 7). Cleuziou & Tosi ( 2007 : 107) estimate that more than 100,000 cairns were built during this period. The tombs housed multiple collective burials, with as many as twenty skeletons known from individual excavated cairns (Cleuziou 2003 : 141), alongside grave-goods including stone beads, bronze weapons and pottery. Hafi t tombs are generally sited in prominent locations, particularly on hills and ridges overlooking inland oases and coastal plains. As in Southwest Arabia, the tombs were often grouped to form cemeteries with hundreds of cairns, and Giraud ( 2010 ) has argued, from detailed GIS analyses of tomb distributions in the Ja’alan , that Hafi t tombs acted to visually defi ne the living spaces of Hafi t settlements and created a “landscape of identity” in which group genealogy was physically manifested.

The burial traditions of Southeast Arabia showed a clear development and transformation in the early to mid-3rd mil-lennium BCE (M é ry 2010 ), with the fi rst construction of large, circular collective graves of “Umm an-Nar” type, named after the site of their fi rst excavation by the Danish team on Umm an-Nar Island , UAE (Frifelt 1991 ). These structures are a leitmo-tif of the second major phase of the Southeast Arabian Bronze Age, the “Umm an-Nar Period”, c. 2700/2500 to 2000 BCE . The tombs consisted of a circular stone exterior wall surrounding an internal space that was divided into multiple chambers by stone walls, with rare tombs exhibiting two levels of cham-bers. The fi nest examples, including a number from Umm an-Nar Island and Hili in the oasis of Al Ain , had an exterior stone facing of close-fi tting limestone ashlars with an extremely fi ne fi nish, and occasionally bore low-relief sculptures depicting

FIGURE 3.12.2. Standing stones at the Bronze Age site of al-Midamman, Yemen. (Photo courtesy Edward J. Keall.)

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humans and animals such as cattle, camels, oryx and snakes. Tomb size varied from c. 3 to 14 m in diameter, and the largest tombs would have stood c. 3.5 m high.

The typical Umm an-Nar tombs were communal graves that received individual successive interments over substantial periods – generations or centuries – and excavated examples have held nearly four hundred individuals. A later variant of the Umm an-Nar tomb, comprising burials in subterranean, occa-sionally stone-lined, pits is reported from a number of sites, with the largest example of this type (Tomb N at Hili ) contain-ing more than seven hundred interred individuals. Studies of the vast amount of human remains recovered from Umm an-Nar tombs have provided a glimpse not only into the variabil-ity of burial practices – incidences of the burning of human remains are, for example, prevalent in some tombs – but also into the health and activities of the Bronze Age inhabit-ants. Although generally robust and healthy, individuals com-monly exhibited skeletal markers of arduous manual activity as well as joint disease such as osteoarthritis and dental dis-ease inducing substantial antemortem tooth loss. Moreover, signifi cant instances of anaemia were observed, especially in children (McSweeney et al. 2010 ), and a very early possible case of poliomyelitis was noted in a rare articulated individual in the tomb from Tell Abraq (Baustian & Martin 2010 ).

In addition to the skeletal material, tombs have provided a rich array of grave-goods attesting to widespread cultural con-tacts, including local and imported pottery from Mesopotamia, Bahrain, Iran, Baluchistan and the Indus (M é ry 2000 , 2010 : fi g. 13); carved soft-stone vessels (David 1996 ); copper and bronze implements including weapons, jewellery and vessels; vast numbers of beads in a variety of materials including lapis lazuli, carnelian, agate, silver and gold ( e.g., Benton 1996 ); and rare items such as ivory combs and fi gurines of Indus or Central Asian origin and gold animal pendants (Potts 2000 ). No doubt the development of oceangoing craft was key to such contacts, and important evidence on that front has been recovered in the

form of bitumen slabs from Ra’s al-Jinz RJ-2 in Oman, used to caulk sizeable reed or plank-built vessels (Vosmer 2003 ).

In contrast to the abundant burial archaeological record in Southeast Arabia, the evidence from excavated settlements of the 3rd millennium BCE is much more limited. For the Hafi t Period, perhaps the largest and most extensively excavated res-idential structure is found at the site of HD-6, at Ra’s al Hadd in eastern Oman. Here, multiroomed, rectilinear mud-brick resi-dential structures are encircled by a broad stone fortifi cation wall, about 2 m thick and 30 m in diameter (Cleuziou & Tosi 2007 ; Azzar à 2009). This site stands as the earliest excavated example of a structure that is characteristic of many Bronze Age settlements in Southeast Arabia: the circular “tower” building. Such structures occur singly at smaller sites, but in higher numbers at the larger Umm an-Nar Period settlements of the UAE and Oman. The largest concentrations of such tow-ers, up to fi ve in total, are found at Hili in the UAE and at Bat ( Fig. 3.12.3 ), Bisyah and al-Khashbah in Oman (al-Jahwari & Kennet 2010 ; Cleuziou 2003 ).

The best continuous occupation sequence demonstrating the chronological development of Umm an-Nar Period tow-ers and other settlement components comes from the site of Hili -8 in the Al Ain/Buraimi Oasis, where the construction of a subsquare Phase I mud-brick tower, about 16 m on each side, is dated by sparse pottery fi nds to the early centuries of the 3rd millennium BCE . Over the course of the subsequent Phase II – radiocarbon and typologically dated to the Umm an-Nar Period – the earlier tower structure is built around and over by a larger circular mud-brick tower, with a series of sub-sidiary rectilinear mud-brick buildings (Cleuziou 1989 ; Potts 1990 : fi g. 9). While most Umm an-Nar towers are c. 20–25 m in diameter and may have stood up to 10 m high, the mud-brick and stone tower at 3rd-millennium Tell Abraq , on the northern coast of the UAE, is approximately 40 m in diameter. The interior of the towers is typically supported by cross-walls, creating small chambers that are fi lled with gravel, and all are

FIGURE 3.12.3. The remains of a 3rd-millennium BCE tower building at Bat, Oman. (Photo courtesy Dan Potts.)

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known to have a well at their centre. In the larger settlements with more towers, house structures appear to have spread sparsely and discontinuously over a large area around the tow-ers. Arguments as to the function of these towers focus upon their possible use as defensive places to secure the safety of the local population and of their heavily invested agricultural and water resources. Others have refl ected on their possible role as public monuments refl ecting group membership and intergroup competition, or as power centres for the ruling elites of Magan society. Alternatively, their fundamental link-age with wells has led to suggestions that the towers may have, whatever their other roles, played a part in cultic or religious activities.

In addition to oasis sites with tower buildings, there are numerous Umm an-Nar Period sites known that do not contain towers, including: the site of Umm an-Nar Island itself, where the settlement comprises a series of rectilinear stone dwell-ings and storage rooms (Frifelt 1995 ); the seasonally occupied settlement of Ra’s al-Jinz RJ-2 in the Ja’alan (Cleuziou 2003 ) which shows several large, multiroomed mud-brick houses around a central courtyard area; numerous ephemeral sites on the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Arabia Sea that were probably occupied on a short-term basis for the exploitation of marine resources; and fi nally, many small agricultural villages in the interior. Recent surveys of Umm an-Nar Period settle-ments in Oman (al-Jahwari & Kennet 2010 ) have been used to suggest a three-tiered site hierarchy, with small wadi villages of up to c. 1–2 ha, medium-sized sites with one or two tower buildings, and rarer large sites with up to fi ve towers, such as at Hili and Bat .

The foundation of sedentary life in 3rd-millennium BCE Southeast Arabia was date palm–based oasis agriculture, and date seeds and date palm wood are well attested in local archaeological sites of the 3rd millennium BCE . Although the locus and timing of the initial domestication of the date palm remain uncertain (Beech & Shepherd 2001 ), by the early 3rd millennium BCE in Southeast Arabia the date palm’s tolerance of high temperatures and salinity had be harnessed to provide the cooler, shaded microclimates necessary for growing cere-als (comprising several varieties of wheat and barley), fruits ( e.g., melons) and vegetables in areas where shallow sub-surface water was available (al-Jahwari 2009 : 124). In addi-tion to these plant species, the oasis economy of Bronze Age Southeast Arabia integrated the management of herds of cattle (both zebu and taurine species), sheep and goat. In coastal sites, the contribution of marine resources such as fi sh, mol-luscs, dugong and turtle was also critical, and gazelle, oryx and wild camel were also hunted (Potts 1997 : tabs. 2–6).

The archaeological evidence from Southeast Arabia indi-cates an agriculturally based society that was relatively homo-geneous over a substantial geographical area, and one in which social differentiation and stratifi cation, although clearly existent, did not approach that seen in the neighbouring state-level societies of Dilmun, Mesopotamia and southeast Iran. Cleuziou and Tosi ( 2007 ) have argued that society in Magan was organised along tribal lines, incorporating beliefs and social practices, such as collective communal burials, that

affi rmed equality on an ideological level while masking the contradictory pursuit of power by individuals and groups in the real world. Nevertheless, Mesopotamian textual sources of the late 3rd millennium BCE include several references to “kings” of Magan, and a famous reference by Manishtusu boasts of his defeat of thirty-two “lords” of Magan (Potts 1990 : 135–49). Clearly, the latter example is more in keeping with the dispersed political system suggested by the Bronze Age settle-ments and oases of Southeast Arabia, although the short-term elevation of an individual to leadership of the region might be envisaged in a situation of immediate military necessity, such as the historically attested Mesopotamian campaigns of Naram-Sin and Manishtusu (Cleuziou 2003 : 145).

The 3rd millennium BCE also witnessed the development of a number of craft industries that were important for local consumption and also for Magan’s participation in regional exchange networks. These include the production of fi ne coil and wheel-made pottery with painted and/or appliqu é decora-tion, a technology that appears to have been adopted in the early 3rd millennium BCE from the neighbouring region of southeast Iran/Baluchistan (M é ry 2000 , 2010 : fi g. 14; Potts 2005 ). Also important was the development of a local industry of soft-stone vessel manufacture ( e.g., David 1996 ), products of which are found in considerable numbers in tombs, and more rarely on settlements in Southeast Arabia and farther afi eld in Bahrain, Mesopotamia , Iran and the Indus.

Most signifi cant, however, was the development of copper smelting technology to exploit the rich copper sources of the Al-Hajjar Mountains . Although copper artifacts are known in small numbers from the Hafi t Period ( e.g., at Jebel Hafi t and at HD-6), the local smelting of copper at this time has not been demonstrated. However, by the Umm an-Nar Period it is clear that smelting (perhaps adopted from Southeast Iran, as for ceramic technology) was under way at many sites through-out the Oman Mountains. Research has demonstrated copper smelting at more than twenty Umm an-Nar Period sites, with many more likely to have been destroyed by later and larger-scale mining and smelting operations in the Iron Age and early Islamic periods. Given the scale of remains – ranging from typical smaller smelting villages with c. 200 tonnes of slag to “industrial” sites with up to c. 4000 tonnes (Weeks 2003 ) – it is estimated that 2000 to 4000 tonnes of copper were produced in Southeast Arabia in the Umm an-Nar Period (Hauptmann 1985 ). Such large production volumes are key to the identi-fi cation of Oman as Magan, the “copper mountain” of early Mesopotamian myth and history.

Regardless of the cultural, technological and economic achievements of Umm an-Nar society, a dramatic change in Bronze Age settlement is observed in Southeast Arabia in the early 2nd millennium BCE , ushering in the Wadi Suq Period (c. 2000–1600 BCE ) and the Late Bronze Age (c. 1600–1250 BCE ) (Velde 2003 ). Although continuity of settlement can be observed at a number of sites in the north of the region such as Hili 8, Tell Abraq and Kalba, there is a dramatic reduction in the number of known settlements, especially in Oman, where the best evidence for 2nd-millennium BCE settlement comes from the coastal site of Ra’s al-Jinz RJ-1 (Cleuziou & Tosi 2007 :

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fi g. 275). Once thought to be a refl ection of inadequate survey and poor recognition of Wadi Suq material culture, continued archaeological fi eldwork in the region highlights the reality of a substantial reduction in settlement in the early 2nd millennium BCE ( e.g., al-Jahwari 2009 ). The Late Bronze Age has also pro-vided very sparse evidence for settlements (Velde 2003 : tab. 1), although at sites occupied across the Wadi Suq-Late Bronze Age boundary, such as Tell Abraq and Shimal, the construction of mud-brick “platforms” of possible Central Asian derivation at the very end of this period (c. 1400 BCE ) has been suggested as a sign of increasing social complexity (Magee & Carter 1999 : 175).

There are also clear changes in most elements of material culture at the transition to the Wadi Suq Period, including ceramics, soft-stone vessels and metal artifacts ( e.g., Carter 1997 ; Velde 2003 ; Righetti & Cleuziou 2010). In addition, burial traditions undergo signifi cant change at this time, as attested by discoveries at a number of sites in the UAE and Oman ( e.g., Velde 2003 : tab. 1). Although the tradition of collective burial continues, the absolute numbers of people interred in each tomb tends to be smaller than in the Umm an-Nar Period, being generally in the range of dozens of individuals (Blau 1999 : tab. 6). Wadi Suq Period collective tombs are also sub-terranean rather than aboveground (although some structural elements are visible at the surface) and show a variety of new forms, including long, narrow stone-built chambers with a corbelled roof, T -shaped tombs, and other more elaborate forms seen, for example, at Shimal, Bidyah, Jebel Al-Buhais and Sharm in the UAE (Vogt & Franke-Vogt 1987). Individual burials are also attested at this time, as, for example, in the type-site of Wadi Suq itself.

Further changes in ceramics, soft-stone vessels and metal artifacts defi ne the transition from the Wadi Suq to the Late Bronze Age in the mid-2nd millennium BCE , as clearly out-lined by Velde ( 2003 ). Late Bronze Age tomb types also show changes from the classic Wadi Suq types, incorporating sub-terranean circular and horseshoe-shaped collective tombs as known from Qidfa and the Wadi al-Qawr, UAE (Potts 1997 ). These tombs, and others of earlier Wadi Suq type, were often reused on a substantial scale in the following Iron Age ( e.g., Ziolkowski 2001 ; Barker 2002 ; Fritz 2010 ; Benoist & Hassan 2010 ).

Finally, the 2nd millennium BCE also witnessed changes in subsistence practices. The continuation of an agro-pastoral economy is indicated by the presence of wheat, barley, dates, sheep, goats, cattle and pigs in excavated settlements. However, studies highlight an increasing reliance on fi sh, shellfi sh and other marine resources rather than on the products of agricul-ture and animal husbandry over the course of the 2nd millen-nium BCE , as seen at sites such as Tell Abraq and Shimal in the northern UAE (Potts 1997 ).

The reasons underlying these clear changes in the Bronze Age societies of Southeast Arabia remain uncertain. Although a complete transition to a fully nomadic lifestyle at this time can be ruled out by the evidence from known sedentary settlements, a partial shift towards small-scale, low-visibility nomadic subsistence and settlement patterns

would certainly help to explain the continued prominence of Wadi Suq burials in contrast to scarce settlement remains. Increasingly intensive exploitation of marine resources and the preponderance of larger settlements in coastal regions may further suggest a breakdown in the integrated coastal-oasis subsistence system that characterised the Umm an-Nar Period. Why such a transition may have taken place is a separate question, but environmental deterioration at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE has been discussed as a sig-nifi cant contributing factor by a number of scholars ( e.g., Carter 1997 ; Parker & Goudie 2007 ). Moreover, the early 2nd millennium BCE witnessed major social change across a vast area stretching from southern Mesopotamia, through the Indo-Iranian borderlands, to the Indus region ( e.g. , Crawford 1996; Wright 2012). Considering the strong inte-gration of southeast Arabian communities into the West and South Asian exchange systems of the late 3rd millennium BCE (see later in this chapter ) , it seems likely that the region’s development during the subsequent Wadi Suq period was at least in part related to contemporary economic and political changes in neighbouring areas.

The Bronze Age in the Central Persian Gulf Region (Ancient Dilmun)

The central Persian Gulf region, ancient Dilmun, has an even more celebrated Bronze Age burial tradition than that of Southeast Arabia. Bahrain , in particular, is famous for the more than seventy-fi ve thousand burial tumuli that existed in vast fi elds across the more northerly parts of the island ( Fig. 3.12.4 ), and that are also known in their thousands from Dhahran on the neighbouring Saudi Arabian mainland. The size of the burial mounds varied greatly, from as little as 2 m to in excess of 30 m and there were also substantial varia-tions in construction techniques and architectural complex-ity. Laursen ( 2010 : fi g. 1) illustrates typical burial mounds of the Early Dilmun Period (c. 2200–1800 BCE ), including the low, rock-fi lled tumuli of the “Early Type” with a crude cen-tral chamber, and the higher conical, sand- and gravel-fi lled tumuli of the “Late Type” incorporating a stone cist with large tabular capstones. It is estimated that there are approximately twenty-eight thousand Early Type burials scattered around and along wadi drainages on the limestone dome near the centre of Bahrain, and fi nds of imported Mesopotamian and Southeast Arabian (Umm an-Nar) pottery suggest a date for their con-struction and use between c. 2200 and 2050 BCE . In contrast, the more elaborate Late Type tumuli, estimated to number approximately forty-seven thousand and dating to c. 2050 to 1750 BCE , are concentrated in ten large and compact mound fi elds around the northern and western fringes of the lime-stone dome (H ø jlund 2007 : fi g. 8). Each tumulus, whether of Early or Late Type, typically contained a single individual who

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was buried with a variable array of grave-goods such as pottery vessels – in particular a typical form referred to as the Dilmun burial jar (Laursen 2010 : fi g. 11) – as well as steatite and ala-baster vessels, precious and base metal artifacts, jewellery and stamp seals. Moreover, remains from Late Type mounds indi-cate an increasing presence of animal bones that probably rep-resent the remains of a communal meal consumed during the funerary rites (Olijdam 2010 ).

In addition to the basic Early and Late types, there are varia-tions in burial types that are extremely signifi cant for consider-ing the development of social complexity in ancient Dilmun, including subterranean cist burials, the interconnected tombs of the Saar Southern Burial Complex, and particularly the larger “Ring Mounds” in the Aali cemetery, “Radial Wall Type” mounds from the Kazarkkan cemetery and the “Royal Mounds” from Aali. The increasing scale and elaboration of the Radial Wall Type mounds from Kazarkkan, dated to c.

2050–2000 BCE , correlates with dramatic changes in Dilmun society and the emergence of a “dispersed elite” of prominent individuals within a predominantly village-based society. In contrast, the later Royal Mounds at Aali – with diameters of up to 30–50 m, standing heights of up to 12 m, and multiple storeys of internal chambers – are interpreted as evidence for the emergence of a centralised political structure in the early 2nd millennium BCE ; an elite “royal” lineage that ruled over a developed urban, state-level society (H ø jlund 2007 : 136; fi g. 23). Analyses of contemporary non-elite burials also attest to the widespread development of increased social stratifi ca-tion in Dilmun society at this time. Later burial traditions of Period III, of the 15th and 14th centuries BCE , are of a different style again, consisting generally of collective burials contain-ing several dozen individuals in subterranean rectangular pits covered with stone slabs, as known from al-Hajjar , al-Maqsha and Madinat Hamad .

FIGURE 3.12.4. A fi eld of early Dilmun burial mounds on Bahrain. (Photo courtesy the Danish Gulf Expedition, copyright Moesgaard Museum.)

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In contrast to the overwhelming burial archaeology record, evidence for Bronze Age settlement sites in the central Gulf region is relatively limited. Nevertheless, that which is avail-able provides additional material support for the theorised increases in social complexity derived from study of the tumuli fi elds. The little evidence for early 3rd millennium BCE settle-ment is concentrated on the Saudi littoral and on Tarut Island (Potts 1990 : fi g. 6). By the late 3rd millennium BCE , however, the Arabian Peninsula’s fi rst truly urban settlement had been established at Qala’at al-Bahrain on the northern coast of Bahrain. Built predominantly of beach rock with architectural elaboration in worked limestone ashlars, the so-called Early Dilmun Phase of the site covered an area of approximately 15 ha and was surrounded by a large stone-built city wall, with elaborate public monumental architecture and storage struc-tures in the centre of the mound (H ø jlund & Andersen 1994 , 1997 ). Although it was not completely abandoned, there seems to have been a signifi cant reduction in the scale of occupation at Qala’at al-Bahrain around 1750 BCE , before reoccupation of the early Dilmun palace and rebuilding of the city wall by rulers who are known, from approximately fi fty excavated cuneiform doc-uments, to have been Kassites from Mesopotamia (H ø jlund & Andersen 1994 , 1997 ). This “Middle Dilmun” occupational phase can be dated principally to the 15th to the 13th centuries BCE and represents a period during which Dilmun was essen-tially a colony of the Kassite state, ruled locally by a foreign, Kassite-appointed governor.

In addition to the settlement evidence, a number of temples have been found across the north of Bahrain. These are best known from Saar (Crawford et al. 1997 ) and, most impres-sively, Barbar , where excavations have revealed a sequence of three Early Dilmun Period temples (Andersen & H ø jlund 2003 ). The Barbar temples were rebuilt on the same location, and the deposits consist of a series of superimposed stone-built, quadrilateral platforms from c. 17 to 40 m per side, on top of which were various cult installations. Surviving atop the platform of Temple II, on a lime plaster fl oor, were a number of cultic installations including pierced stones and a double altar of dressed ashlars that may have been used for the sacrifi ce of sheep, goats and especially cattle. The temples incorporated a deep chamber or pool built around a fresh-water spring, accessed via an elaborately made “processional” stairway, and a court area with abundant evidence for fi re. The court area has been interpreted as a place where slaughtered animals were further processed: butchered, cooked and, at least partially, consumed. Other artifacts recovered from the site, especially coarse beakers and goblets, provide further evidence that cooking, drinking and eating were communal activities organised in the context of the temple. The well and pool, on the other hand, are thought to have been related to the nature of the deity worshipped in the temple: Andersen and H ø jlund ( 2003 : 330) tentatively suggest that this may have been the god Enki who, in the Mesopotamian creation myth known as Enki and Ninhursag , granted abundant fresh-water to Dilmun.

While Qala’at al-Bahrain appears to have been the primary site and capital of Early and Middle Dilmun, and Barbar the

paramount religious monument, excavations at the nearby settlement of Saar provide key insights into village life in Bronze Age Dilmun (Crawford 2001 ; Crawford et al . 1997 ; Killick & Moon 2005 ). The site covers approximately 2 ha and consists of rows of houses of rough limestone aligned along perpendicular streets, with a temple at the centre of the settlement. Houses show a very consistent two- to three-room layout with a smaller rectangular room built in the corner of a larger room, and often share walls with neighbouring structures forming blocks of buildings within the town quarters. The Saar houses also showed relatively conventional cooking installations and storage facilities. Ceramics from Saar indicate the manufacture of a range of local cooking pots and jars similar to those from contem-porary Qala’at al-Bahrain Period II, and copper working is also attested. Evidence for variation in house sizes, number of storage vessels and the prevalence of imported pottery has been used to argue for inequalities in wealth or status among the Saar community, echoing those known from the burial record.

Although there are some differences in the evidence for sub-sistence practices from Early Dilmun Period Qala’at al-Bahrain and Saar, both show a strong emphasis on the exploitation of marine resources, especially fi sh from close coastal environ-ments, with more limited consumption of deep-water fi sh and other marine animals including turtle, dugong and dol-phin. Evidence from botanical remains and phytoliths demon-strates a developed oasis agriculture based on the date palm, highlighted by the widespread consumption of dates and the extensive use of date palm leaves and wood for construction purposes. In addition, cereals including wheat and barley were grown with the aid of irrigation. Domestic cattle (possibly zebu), sheep and goats were the key elements of the domes-tic animal economy, although pigs and asses are also attested, and the diet was supplemented by the hunting of gazelle, oryx and wild dromedary.

The evidence for an urban settlement at Qala’at al-Bahrain , large-scale construction and elaboration of the Barbar temples, and increasing hierarchy in the burial archaeol-ogy of the Early Dilmun Period can be correlated with rare Mesopotamian historical references to kings and queens of Dilmun, who engaged in trade and diplomacy with various ruling dynasties of the wider Near East (Laursen 2008 : 155). The importance of international exchange in the develop-ment of Dilmun can be seen not only in the surviving histori-cal sources, but also in the rapid adoption and development of elaborately decorated “Persian/Arabian Gulf ”–type stamp seals and, later, “Dilmun seals” ( e.g., Crawford 2001 ), by the adoption of foreign weight- and script-systems (particularly those of the Indus Valley ), and by the prevalence of imported material culture, particularly pottery, from regions as dispa-rate as Mesopotamia, Iran, Oman and the Indus. Moreover, the critical role of Dilmun in the Gulf trading system is clear from the establishment in the late 3rd millennium BCE of a large Dilmun colony on the island of Failaka , Kuwait, at the very northern end of the Persian Gulf (H ø jlund 1987 ; Crawford 1998 ).

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A Note on Bronze Age Exchange in the Persian Gulf

Throughout the Bronze Age, the societies bordering the Persian Gulf played a critical role in the movement of goods, people and ideas between the early states of Mesopotamia, Iran and the Indus Valley. This exchange is attested in Mesopotamian texts already by the end of the 4th millennium BCE , with the fi rst mention of Dilmun in the Archaic texts from Uruk, and increases in scale and prominence over the course of the 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE . During the Early Dynastic Period, Dilmun is known for providing copper and wood to the cit-ies of the Mesopotamian alluvium. By the Sargonic Period, not only Dilmun, but also Magan and Meluhha (the ancient Indus region), are known from texts to have been engaged directly in the Persian Gulf trade with Mesopotamia (see Potts 1990 for a full review of the textual evidence).

The prominence of these three regions in the cuneiform sources varies through time, and to some extent can be cor-related with the archaeological record of eastern Arabia and the Indus. Magan, for example, achieves much greater promi-nence in the late 3rd millennium BCE , at the time when the Bronze Age societies of Southeast Arabia witnessed a fl ores-cence of settlement and craft production during the Umm an-Nar Period. In contrast, Dilmun, eclipsed in historical records of the Ur III Period, regains almost exclusive prominence in records of Persian Gulf exchanges from the early 2nd mil-lennium BCE , corresponding closely with rapid development on Bahrain during the Early Dilmun Period and with the dra-matic changes in Southeast Arabia across the Umm an-Nar/Wadi Suq transition. Furthermore, the dramatic decline in the Persian Gulf trade in the early Babylonian Period – known from texts and related by some to political and economic events in Mesopotamia ( e.g., Crawford 1998 ) – is contemporary with the end of the Early Dilmun Period and with the collapse of the Indus civilisation. It is clear that exchange was fundamental to the development of Bronze Age polities on Bahrain and in Southeast Arabia, even if it was not the basis of their existence (al-Jahwari 2009 ).

As noted in the preceding sections, the material residues of this exchange system permeate the fi nds catalogues of excava-tions in eastern Saudi Arabian littoral, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman. In addition to supplementing the information from-Mesopotamian texts, these artifacts highlight the complexity and multidirectionality of Bronze Age exchange in the Persian Gulf region: Indus weights, pottery and carnelian beads are prevalent throughout eastern Arabia (M é ry 2000 ), alongside pottery from highland Southwest and Southeast Iran; Arabian pottery, soft-stone vessels and possibly copper ingots are found at Iranian sites such as Tepe Yahya in Kerman and Liyan on the Bushire Peninsula; Dilmun stamp seals are impressed on cuneiform documents from Susa in Iran, where Umm an-Nar-type soft-stone vessels are also prominent (Potts 2003 ); a Bactrian ivory comb (and perhaps also Bactrian tin) from Tell

Abraq is mirrored by a Southeast Arabian soft-stone vessel from Gonur-depe in Central Asia (Potts 2008 ); Umm an-Nar pottery and soft-stone occur in signifi cant amounts on Bahrain, and Early Dilmun pottery is found in large quantities at Tell Abraq and other sites along the coast of the UAE (Carter 2003 ). Many more examples of such exchanges could be provided and it is clear that people and ideas moved within this exchange system alongside the fl ow of goods. The abiding impression derived from the archaeological evidence is that the Persian Gulf exchange system was not a system of binary relationships with the Mesopotamian centre: regions maintained relationships with many other participants in the system, and goods and information moved in all directions ( cf . Lyonnet & Kohl 2008 ).

Iron Age Arabia (c. 13/1200–300 BCE )

The later 2nd and 1st millennia BCE represented a period of dra-matic social change in many areas of Arabia, including the fi rst development of literate, urban communities in the western parts of the peninsula. Here, the archaeological evidence for these changes is reviewed by geographical region, beginning with Southeast Arabia and the central Persian Gulf region and moving to Southwest and Northwest Arabia.

Iron Age Southeast Arabia

While known sites of the early Iron Age (Iron I Period, c. 1300–1100 BCE ) are rare in Southeast Arabia, the transition to the Iron II Period (c. 1100–600 BCE ) coincides with a massive increase in the number of known settlements in Southeast Arabia, which are characterised by a relatively uniform mate-rial culture (Magee 1999 : fi g. 6). In the UAE , important Iron Age settlements include Tell Abraq on the coast, Muweilah farther inland between the coast and the piedmont, a number of settlements on the piedmont near al-Madam , including par-ticularly al-Thuqaibah (Cordoba 2003 ), and several large sites in and around the Al Ain /Buraimi Oasis, including Rumeilah , Bint Saud , Hili 2 and Hili 14. Important evidence also comes from the UAE mountains at Bithnah (Benoist 2007 ) and from the east coast at Husn Awhala . In Oman, important Iron II set-tlements are known from the Wadi Bani ‘Umar and Wadi Fizh (Magee 1999 : 53), from the Maysar region and from Salut near Nizwah (Iamoni 2009 ).

Although the material culture of Iron II sites shows clear differences from preceding periods, most particularly in ceramic forms ( e.g., Iamoni 2009 ), there is broad continuity in the materials exploited that suggests development rather than replacement: soft-stone vessels, for instance, although decorated differently from their Late Bronze Age predecessors, are an abiding tradition of the Iron II Period ( e.g., Ziolkowski 2001 ); there are a number of metal artifact types, including tanged bronze arrowheads, that appear to span the Bronze

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Age–Iron Age divide (Magee 1998 ; Yule & Weisgerber 1999 : pl. 52); and Iron Age burials are consistently placed into tombs originally built in the Wadi Suq Period or Late Bronze Age (see earlier in this chapter). One clear change from the Late Bronze Age to the early 1st millennium BCE is the increase in foreign ceramic wares reported, particularly material from Iran.

The expansion of settlement in the Iron II Period has been linked to the use of a new irrigation technique, known as falaj irrigation, which involved tapping the shallow water tables beneath alluvial fans near the base of the al-Hajjar mountains and directing the water via subterranean and surface channels to fertile soils of the nearby piedmont (Boucharlat 2003 : fi g. 2). The origins of this technique remain debated (Magee 2005), but fi eldwork in Southeast Arabia has conclusively demonstrated the association of falaj systems with Iron II settlements in the Hili and al-Madam areas (Boucharlat 2003 ). The new system of irrigation allowed year-round agriculture and dramatic settle-ment intensifi cation on the piedmont strip of inland Southeast Arabia, and it is clear that date palm agriculture and the culti-vation of cereals, fruits and vegetables, known already by the Bronze Age, continued in the Iron Age. Magee ( 2007 ) has fur-ther argued that expansion of settlement to Southeast Arabia’s desert areas in the Iron II Period, as represented by the site of Muweilah , was a result of the initial domestication of the camel in the early 1st millennium BCE (Uerpmann & Uerpmann 2002 ). Large-scale Iron Age metal smelting sites now reported from the northern reaches of the Rub’ al-Khali in the UAE and Oman provide additional evidence for desert settlement in the 1st millennium BCE , but also attest to earlier Bronze Age utilisa-tion of such environments (Herrmann et al. 2012).

The settlements of Iron Age Southeast Arabia show a variety of forms and sizes, refl ecting adaptations to the diverse ter-rain and environments of the region. They include sedentary agricultural villages as at Rumeilah and Hili , herders’ settle-ments as at al-Thuqaibah and desert sites focused perhaps on the control of trade routes and the management of camels (Cordoba 2003 ; Magee 2007 ). Nevertheless, there are a num-ber of elements which link them together. While the known settlements are not generally very large – usually incorporating rectilinear, multiroomed mud-brick structures covering a few ha in size at most – several display a well-developed fortifi ca-tion system. Particularly good examples are provided by the walled settlements at Muweilah , Husn Awhala and Wadi Fizh and the square-walled compound at Hili 14. Well-known Iron Age hilltop forts at Lizq and elsewhere add to the evidence for defensive structures in the Iron II Period. In addition, a num-ber of sites including Muweilah, Rumeilah and Bida Bint Saud attest to the importance of a new architectural element, the columned building. The prototype for these structures derives from Iron Age Iran, and it has been argued that the artifacts and residues associated with the columned buildings in Southeast Arabia – storage vessels, pouring vessels with foreign typo-logical parallels, bronze ladles, dense concentrations of burnt animal bones, incense burners, remains of bronze-working, and iron artifacts – indicate that the columned buildings were a focus for elite activities such as feasting and for the control of critical activities including irrigation and trade (Magee 2007 ).

The degree of social complexity that characterises Iron Age Southeast Arabia is diffi cult to determine, but, as for the 3rd millennium BCE , we have at least one Mesopotamian record that mentions a king from Southeast Arabia: Pad ê , king of Qad ê , who had his capital at Izki in Oman is mentioned in an inscription of Assurbanipal from Nineveh , dated to c. 640 BCE (Potts 1990 : 393–4).

Following the Iron II Period, there is again a reduction in the number of known settlements dating to the Iron III Period (c. 600–300 BCE ). Boucharlat ( 2003 : 169) has related this observa-tion to the lowering of water tables, which made falaj irrigation for shallow alluvial sources unworkable. At this time, there is some evidence for the incorporation of parts of Southeast Arabia as a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire (Potts 1990 : 394–400). Although, as for the preceding Iron II Period, there is considerable material evidence of contact between Southeast Arabia and Iran at this time, the scale of the actual Persian pres-ence in the region is likely to have been minimal.

The Iron Age in the Central Persian Gulf Region

Although there is some evidence for 1st-millennium BCE (pre-Hellenistic) occupation on the mainland of eastern Saudi Arabia and on Failaka (Potts 1990 : 329–31), the most signifi -cant information on settlement during this period in the cen-tral Persian Gulf comes from Qala’at al-Bahrain , where Danish excavations have outlined the remains of large, multiroomed stone buildings in Area 519 (H ø jlund & Andersen 1997 ). The remains, which fall into the Late Dilmun Period of occupa-tion at the site, are often referred to as palaces, although this designation is uncertain and they may rather have been elite domestic structures. They represent both reuse of the earlier monumental buildings in the central area of the site, as well as entirely new construction in two main phases, and were preserved to a height of nearly 5 m in places. The buildings had impressive walls of fi nely fi nished limestone ashlars and numerous well-constructed and kept lavatories.

Excavations of Late Dilmun deposits at Qala’at al-Bahrain have also revealed evidence for large-scale copper casting, attested by ashy layers, copper prills and slags, crucible frag-ments and an elaborate pyrotechnological structure inter-preted as a furnace with pot bellows. There is also limited evidence for the use of iron objects and for local ironsmithing at this time. In addition, a large silver hoard from this period was found buried in a ceramic vessel beneath a fl oor in one of the rooms of the “palace”, containing nearly six hundred pieces and weighing c. 1.2 kg. Analyses of faunal and botanical assemblages from the site indicate that, regardless of changes in the social and political organisation of the region, the sub-sistence basis of Dilmun society was still much the same: a developed agro-pastoral system based upon date-palm oasis cultivation and management of herds of sheep, goats and

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cattle. Nevertheless, some changes are observable: sheep seem to appear in higher numbers than in earlier periods and cattle numbers are lower, and although fi shing continued to be an important subsistence activity, the marine component of the diet may have been smaller and the domesticated animal con-tent higher than in the Early or Middle Dilmun periods.

Information regarding the social and political structure of Late Dilmun society remains minimal. Aside from the evidence of the monumental buildings, Mesopotamian sources mention a king Uperi of Dilmun who gave tribute to the Neo-Assyrian ruler Sargon II in c. 700 BCE (Potts 1990 : 333–8), and later texts from the reign of the Neo-Assyrian rulers Sennacherib , Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal contain further references to tribute sent to Assyria from Dilmun, in one instance by the Dilmun king named Hundaru , and possibly booty from the conquest of Dilmun. Strong Mesopotamian infl uence on the northern and central Persian Gulf region seems to have continued into the following Neo-Babylonian Period, when there is evidence to suggest that Nebuchadnezzar constructed a palace on Failaka and a Babylonian “area administrator” was installed in Dilmun during the reign of Nabonidus . It seems likely that, after the fall of Babylon , Dilmun came under the control of the Achaemenid Empire , perhaps as a part of the so-called 14th satrapy incorporating the islands of the Erythraean Sea (Potts 1990 : 333 f f ). Unsurprisingly given the known his-torical sources, the ceramics of Late Dilmun Qala’at al-Bahrain , although predominantly locally made, bear clear typological parallels with pottery from Mesopotamia and, in later phases, Achaemenid Persia.

Uniquely, the monumental structures of Late Dilmun Qala’at al-Bahrain are associated with more than thirty snake burials. The snakes – rat snakes and sea snakes only – were commonly placed in bowls and buried in pits, particularly in two rooms of the later-phase buildings. They were asso-ciated with a small number of fi nds, including beads and in one instance a pearl, and seem to have been placed, alive, in textile bags, within the pot before burial. These practices have been interpreted as snake sacrifi ces, and as they are without parallel in prehistoric Bahrain, Potts ( 2007 ; see also Benoist 2007) has suggested they may incorporate elements of South Asian belief systems that were adopted as a result of revi-talised trade and intercultural contacts in the Gulf in the 1st millennium BCE .

Finally, although the burial record of the Late Dilmun Period is not as abundant as in previous millennia, Iron Age graves have been excavated on Bahrain. Important evidence comes from the site of al-Hajjar , where Late Dilmun burials consist of plaster-lined cists cut into the bedrock. These are datable to the 1st millennium BCE by their clear material connections to Southeast Arabian Iron II material, including pottery (espe-cially painted bridge-spouted vessels) and soft-stone vessels (Potts 1990 : 323 f f. ). On the Saudi mainland, other graves with Iron Age material, including Southeast Arabian soft-stone ves-sels, have been reported from Dhahran . Burials of a very dif-ferent nature have been excavated at Qala’at al-Bahrain . After the abandonment of the second phase of Late Dilmun monu-mental structures, a substantial number of burials was dug

into the deposits of Area 519, including sixteen pot burials of children and fi ve adult “bath-tub” burials that can be broadly dated to the mid-1st millennium BCE . Both of these burial types are unusual in Bahrain and show such strong parallels to Mesopotamia that it has been suggested they belong to Mesopotamian immigrants (H ø jlund & Andersen 1997 : 159). Bath-tub burials are also known from Dhahran on the Saudi mainland and from Failaka , and together this group of buri-als provides further evidence of the signifi cant Mesopotamian infl uence on the central Persian Gulf region in the Late Dilmun Period.

Iron Age Western Arabia

The 1st millennium BCE in Southwest Arabia witnessed dra-matic changes in society, not the least of which was the devel-opment of an indigenous writing system. The known texts – of which there are more than ten thousand – include large pub-lic inscriptions carved in stone or cast in bronze which com-memorated military and construction activities, denoted the performance of rituals and outlined laws. In addition to these public texts, many smaller-scale texts have survived; they are written in a cursive text on wooden sticks or palm branches and generally record personal correspondence. The texts doc-ument the rise of a series of complex societies in on the fringes of the Ramlat as-Sab’atayn in the early to mid-1st millennium BCE , comprising the classical South Arabian states of Awsan , Saba , Ma’in , Qataban and Himyar that persisted in one form or another until the coming of Islam . The historical sources attest the existence of numerous rulers of cities and larger territorial states in the region, who are called king or, in the case of more powerful rulers such as the famous Karib’il Watar , “unifi er” or “federator” (Robin 2002 ). They tell us of the construction of towns, temples and irrigation systems, and of colonies in newly conquered areas. Although external reference points in the South Arabian inscriptions are rare, the existence of kings in the region receives support from Neo-Assyrian historical sources which document the receipt of tribute from rulers of the region in the late 8th and 7th centuries BCE . South Arabian texts and those from its 1st-millennium BCE neighbours in the Near East also indicate the importance to South Arabia’s pros-perity of the overland camel caravan trade in frankincense and other aromatics (Groom 2002 ).

The nature of the early South Arabian towns, cities and states is well attested by excavations at sites across Yemen , but per-haps most signifi cantly at the Sabaean capital of Marib , where a complex walled city more than 100 ha in area incorporated elaborate stone monumental architecture and large extramural religious structures such as the Awwam Temple , dedicated to the principal Sabaean god Almaqah (Breton 2002 ; Zaid & Maraqten 2008 ). Other South Arabian settlements of the Pre-Classical 1st millennium BCE such as Tamna’ and Shabwa , although not as large as Marib itself, share many of its fea-tures: city walls, elaborate monumental stone architecture and

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extramural temples, not to mention an abundant archaeological record of burial structures and large-scale irrigation works for fl oodwater capture and dispersal that allowed the farming of a wide range of crops (Vogt 2002 ; Wilkinson 2002 ).

However, the development of South Arabian writing demar-cates the end of Southwest Arabia’s prehistory and the transi-tion to periods when a historical narrative, albeit incomplete and imprecise, can be constructed for the region (see Hoyland 2001 ). Thus, much of the region’s 1st millennium BCE archae-ology lies outside the scope of this review of prehistoric Arabia (see Simpson 2002 , and Edens & Wilkinson 1998 for summa-ries). Nevertheless, archaeological discoveries at a number of sites in Yemen are important for understanding the genesis of South Arabia’s historical kingdoms, which have often been seen as the result of cultural borrowings or of migration into the region by more advanced groups from northern Arabia. Although clear links can be traced with the north, for example, in the form of the South Arabian alphabetic script , the pro-cesses underpinning state formation in Southwest Arabia are likely to have been highly complex ( e.g., Edens & Wilkinson 1998 ). Archaeological evidence has played a clear role in dis-entangling the questions of epigraphic and cultural develop-ments in Southwest Arabia, and particularly in demonstrating their indigenous context. In particular, excavations at the sites of Hajar bin Humeid , Hajar ar-Rayhani and Yala show, already by the late 2nd millennium BCE , evidence for substantial set-tlement size, irrigation agriculture and ceramics that can be related to the later South Arabian cities. Moreover, these sites have yielded short South Arabian inscriptions on pottery that predate the later, larger monumental inscriptions of the early mid-1st millennium BCE . Alongside evidence from excava-tions at Iron Age sites in the highlands of Yemen and on the Tihamah coast, which highlight indigenous developments towards complexity in areas untouched by the frankincense trade, such archaeological data are critical in considering the origins and growth of the historical South Arabian kingdoms (Edens & Wilkinson 1998 ).

In general, the archaeology of the Iron Age polities of Northwest Arabia, closely linked with the South Arabian kingdoms by the overland camel trade in frankincense and other materials, is poorly known. Important Iron Age sites of the Hejaz, such as Qurayyah and al-‘Ula (Bawden & Edens 1989 : fi g. 2), and in the Jawf Oasis have been the subject of only limited investigations, and clear evidence for Iron Age occupation comes predominantly from the oasis city of Tayma . Renewed excavations at the site (Eichmann et al. 2006; German Archaeological Institute 2010 ) indicate that Tayma was occupied from at least the 3rd millennium BCE , and its palm gardens and water sources may have been sur-rounded by a 14 km-long defensive wall already by the early 2nd millennium. Eichmann et al . (2006) highlight close mate-rial connections between Tayma and the Levant and suggest migration of north Levantine groups to the site in the early 2nd millennium BCE , while Parr ( 1993 ) has highlighted the possible importance of contact with the Egyptian world in the development of oasis towns in the Hejaz in the later 2nd millennium BCE .

However, the best attested occupation at Tayma falls after the 12th century BCE and the site reached a peak of importance in the mid-1st millennium BCE when functioning as the seat of the last Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus , who resided there for ten years between c. 553 and 543 BCE (Bawden & Edens 1989 ). The large Bronze Age exterior wall supplemented an interior city wall, possibly surrounded by a moat, and there is evidence for a range of industrial areas and substantial structures at the site including a large temple. Although debated, the “Midianite” or “Qurayyah” ceramics of the late 2nd and early 1st millennia BCE at Tayma suggest continuing ties with the Levant at this time (Tebes 2013; Bawden & Edens 1989 ; Parr 1988 ). By the mid-1st millennium BCE , the archaeological record of Tayma is supple-mented by a substantial historical record, including texts in Aramaic and Taymanitic (Macdonald 2000). Moreover, histor-ical records of neighbouring regions, especially Assyria and Babylonia, indicate Tayma’s role as a trading post, and texts from later in the 1st millennium BCE highlight the competition between the various oasis centres of Northwest Arabia in the control of the overland incense trade from the south.

“Historic” Arabia It is not easy to defi ne the chronological termination point of Arabian pre history. Although Arabia existed on the fringes of literate societies in Mesopotamia and Egypt from the late 4th millennium BCE and parts of the region were mentioned in foreign written sources regularly from the 3rd millennium BCE , indigenous writing systems were not adopted until the 1st millennium BCE in western Arabia, as outlined in this chapter. From this time, histories of a sort can be written for parts of the peninsula, and shortly thereafter Arabia’s and the wider Near East’s interactions with the Classical World provided the context for an additional layer of historical writings related to the region. It is roughly at this point that we have chosen to end our review of Arabian prehistory. Nevertheless, even in later periods that have provided large numbers of written sources – for example, the tens of thousands of examples of graffi ti known from late pre-Islamic northern Arabia – most Arabian tribal societies were still largely oral rather than liter-ate, and available historical sources barely touch upon many components of ancient Arabian life ( e.g., Macdonald 2010 ). This situation has prevailed into the relatively recent past, and it is clear that, in addition to the prehistoric discoveries outlined in this chapter, archaeology will continue to provide fundamental insights into our understanding of “historic” Arabia.

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