Foretaste of a future with climate change

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an open air cooking area, a sink for water, a kind of system or processing structure. This is a raw architecture but what was interesting once again is to date that period of architecture.” He shared that the radiocarbon dating gave indications of 3rd-4th century occupation.

Moving to the former period, the proto-history of the Bronze and Iron age, Dr Schiettecatte shared that this period was not attested at the al-Yamama and the team discovered this in other areas in necropolises. He described the clusters of dry stone tombs found in the oasis of al-Kharj. The number of tombs has been ascertained by counting them on satellite imagery. We have isolated tombs but in some places we have clusters and concentration of tombs. The main necropolises are of 527 tombs in At Jibal Umm al-Rus, 1,584 tombs in At al-’Afja and 2,814 tombs in At ’Ayn al-Dila.

The tombs are not located in the valley but on rocky areas, concentrated on the edge of the plateau. There are different kinds of tombs – circular, rectangular tombs. Tombs with ring walls and a specific type of architecture of cuneiform tombs also known as tapered structures.

Dr Schiettecatte shared that the main problem the team faced during this excavation was that all these tombs were looted. “It is not a recent looting, in fact. They have been looted all along history, even in the Bronze and Iron age. So in none of these tombs did we find complete skeletons or sets of artefacts deposited on these small fragments. We are lucky enough to discover remains of seven individuals identified from single bones to crushed bones in powders. It is possible from this to infer a few things. First, they are all individual graves, not collective. These are primary burials which means that the body was buried just after the death because we just discovered the small bones in some cases. We also discovered what we called the anatomical connections which means set of bones from the arm or the leg and so on.”

The third interesting fact was that they had been reduced in time. The excavated chamber of one grave had a first body that was buried, dated by radiocarbon analysis to the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the early Bronze age. Then, the chamber collapsed, it was visited, looted and abandoned. It filled up with sand and it was reopened and reused and another body was buried in other layer in the same tomb in later period of the Iron age, he informed.

“As far as we know, all these tombs were built in the Bronze age. we don’t have any evidence of such tombs freshly built in the Iron age. The few artefacts discovered inside these tombs are very rare but are quite interesting. We have some beads, spearheads, sickle swords etc”, he stated.

The bronze sickle sword is the earliest of its kind discovered in the Arabian peninsula and no parallel for that exists in the entire Arabian peninsula except that found in rock art where figures are seen devices that look like the bronze sickle sword, he revealed.

The datings from the tombs have been done on the bones and are consistent with the occupation of these graves. He shared that these graves were occupied and used between 2300 and 1800 BCE which is contemporary to the Dilmun graves in Bahrain.

in the last part of his lecture, looked at the settlement process in Central Arabia. Putting together all the radiocarbon dating, he had two remarks. “Firstly, we have periods of occupation and gaps. There are clearly phases where we have evidence of occupation and no evidence of occupation. The second finding shows two different time periods for the occupation of the area of al-Kharj. The Bronze and Iron age, for which the only remains we have are the tombs, necropolises, no single settlement or villages, towns or built structures except tombs for that period which raises the issue of whether people were mobile groups or settled. I would think considering this archaeological data that they were mobile.”

The other question is whether they were mobile in a wide region and moving along or just living in the neighbourhood. “We have some evidence to answer this question. The first is that the two big necropolises were located next to the artesian spring, the second one is located next to sinkholes so they are clearly connected to the sources of water. Also present were paleo lakes which were active in the 6th and 5th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC there was no water any more but we can assume that there were if not lakes, there were grazing areas for herds, so preferential grazing areas and I think that population were just moving around these neighbourhoods

Photo by Rizalde Cayanan, courtesy of DAI because there was water, there was grazing areas for the herd and they were buried in these necropolises. Another thing that makes me think that they just lived in the neighbourhood is the primary burial, when people died they were just buried nearby.”

He continued, “In the second period of time, in which we have settlements, dates to the 1st millennium BC, people started to settle down in the valley, in the alluvial plains, where it was possible to practice agriculture and from that time onwards it was possible to see that the appearance of settlements.”

He shared that the reason why people started to settle down at that time could be connected with caravan trade. At that time, caravan networks linked South Arabia with Mesopotamia and the near east for the trade of frankincense, myrrh and other aromatics. Regular caravan trade started to develop in the 7th century BC.

“We have evidence of agriculture at the time. We know people were not just herders but also practiced agriculture. Analysis of the botanical elements reveal the presence of wheat, barley, date palms. We also have evidence of camel and sheep herding”, he noted.

During the Islamic occupation of the region, the site of al-Yamama became bigger. At that time, the agricultural capacity increased considerably and there are some arguments for it. The sinkholes and springs, sources of fresh water that could be used for agriculture were located in rocky areas, and not in areas that could be cultivated. He shared that to bring the water from the sources to the cultivated areas, people built monumental hydraulic devices to bring in these waters over five kms from the sinkholes to the palm groves.

“We can see through the different environmental studies that the agriculture diversified with chick peas, sorghum and the culture of cotton; there was also the presence of cattle and chicken, “he said.

“This is the progressive settlement process in the Al Kharj from mobile populations living in the area in the bronze and the iron age to the progressive settling down of this population in the 4th century BC connected to the trade and then the implementation of huge hydraulic systems aiding the development of large cities with large craft and trade activities and a huge mosque”, he concluded.