The Standing Stone Cultures of Northwestern Arabia - From pastoral to oasis life: cultural and technological strategies interacting with environmental shifts
Physical Geography
Final Report Abstract
The DFG project focused on a novel research question confronted with a hitherto extremely poor state of art: approached by an interdisciplinary regional study, it aimed to shed light on how Arabia’s territories contributed one of the most innovative and sustainable socio-economies to the Middle East’s and global history, the Arabian oasis life mode. Former research suggested that early oasis life was promoted by enhanced climate aridity after 4.0 ka cal BCE which forced the extensive megalithic shepherd/ standing stone cultures like those of Rajajil or Qulban Beni Murra to contract at hydrologically favoured places of the Arabian Peninsula. The 5th millennium cal BCE shepherd cultures’ hydraulic competencies such as building wells and troughs using channel technologies as well as their social organization must have gradually become the substratum of the well-based sedentary oasis horticulture from ~4.0 ka cal BCE. A most promising region to test this general hypothesis and research question for Arabia is Rajajil and its greater environs in N Saudi Arabia, considered to be one of the early transition areas to the historically new oasis life-mode. Archaeohydrologically, our still premature knowledge of the early Arabian oasis defines them as artificial horticultural sociohydraulic systems in arid land environments, irrigated by fortified wells or channels leading off from surface water sources (springs, water harvesting systems). A larger diversity of the early Arabian Oasis is expected, related to the ecological and climatological specifics of a region, as well as hydraulic modifications of natural oases. The major aims of our pilot study were the clear identification of the archaeological sites and hydraulic systems of the 5th and 4th millennium BCE in northwestern Saudi-Arabia, the detection and primary analysis of environmental archives (fluvial and sebkha sediments) with high potential for interdisciplinary interpretation, and testing of our preliminary sociohydraulic and palaeoenvironmental project theses. In our project we applied the following methods: a) archaeological, geoarchaeological and archaeohydrological surveys, b) archaeological and geoarchaeological soundings and sampling procedures, c) geoarchaeological, geomorphological and geochemical sediment analyses, and d) the interdisciplinary usage of a geographical information system.
Publications
- 2016. The Socio-Hydraulic Foundations of Oasis Life in NW Arabia: The 5th Millennium BCE Shepherd Environs of Rajajil, Rasif and Qulban Beni Murra. In Luciani, M. (Ed.): The Archaeology of North Arabia. Oases and Landscapes. Proceedings of the International Congress ..., 5-8th Dec., 2013. Oriental and European Archaeology 4, Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, pp. 79-114
Gebel, H.G.K., in collaboration with al-Trrad, A., al-Khlifa, H., al-Amri, Z.H., Abu al-Hassan, A.M., Mahasneh, H., al-Souliman, A.S., Wellbrock, K., Grottker, M., Zielhofer, C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1553/0x0036e24e) - 2018. Climate forcing and shifts in water management on the Northwest Arabian Peninsula (mid-Holocene Rasif wetlands, Saudi Arabia). Quaternary International 473, 120-140
Zielhofer, C., Wellbrock, K., al-Souliman, A.S., von Grafenstein, M., Schneider, B., Fitzsimmons, K., Stele, A., Lauer, T., von Suchodoletz, H., Al-Khilfa, H., Grottker, M., Gebel, H.G.K.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.03.001)
