Figure 4 - uploaded by Hélène DAVID-CUNY
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Dilmun-inspired seals from Failaka Island and northern Oman (figure by H. David-Cuny; images courtesy of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters of Kuwait and the Ministry of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate of Oman).
Source publication
The Iron Age (c. 1300-600 BC) of Southeastern Arabia is characterised by rapid expansion of settlement. Social structures formed over the previous millennia, however, persisted and were reinforced through the development of collective funerary monuments. A recently discovered tomb of Late Bronze to Early Iron Age date at Dibbā al-Bayah in the Sulta...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... on the soft-stone vessel assemblage. This includes several examples with designs comparable to those on vessels securely dated to the Middle to Late Bronze Age transition (see Velde 2003: fig. 6). Typological assessment of bronze arrowheads from LCG-1 indicates that the tomb was no longer frequented after c. 600 BC (Yule & Gernez 2018: 54 & fig. ...
Context 2
... on the soft-stone vessel assemblage. This includes several examples with designs comparable to those on vessels securely dated to the Middle to Late Bronze Age transition (see Velde 2003: fig. 6). Typological assessment of bronze arrowheads from LCG-1 indicates that the tomb was no longer frequented after c. 600 BC (Yule & Gernez 2018: 54 & fig. ...
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From the southern Levant to southeast Arabia, new technologies and social networks shaped metal production and trade in a variety of important ways. In this paper, we review the development of copper metallurgy in Early Iron Age Oman ca. 1300–800 BCE and compare it with development in the southern Levant. Settlement intensification, innovations in...
Citations
... Socio-political, economic, environmental, and climatic conditions and changes across the eastern Mediterranean and southwest Asia led to a diverse array of local adaptations including contrasting trajectories in southeast Arabia and the southern Levant. In both regions, changes occurred amidst considerable continuity in material culture, social structure, and composition (Gregoricka & Sheridan, 2017) and were marked both by transformations (Avanzini & Phillips, 2010) and by a reinforcement of elements of Bronze Age cultural expression (Frenez et al., 2021). As for the broad trajectory of the EIA, the southern Levant saw the development of centralized polities born out of polymorphous societies which are defined as comprising fluctuating proportions of nomadic and settled populations (Ben-Yosef, 2019; Ben-Yosef, 2021). ...
... In southeast Arabia, smelting and metal objects were similarly imbued with ritual and symbolic connotations having been found in funerary contexts, hoards, cultic, or ceremonial spaces (Nashef, 2010;Goy et al., 2013;Benoist et al., 2015;Weeks et al., 2017;Rodrigo et al., 2017;Karacic et al., 2017;Frenez et al., 2021;Nasser S. Al-Jahwari et al., 2021). Hoards rich with finished metal objects, ingots, and slags are known also at settlements with ritual deposits at Masafi 1 in Fujairah (Benoist et al., 2012), and at Mudhmar East in central Oman where scores of copper alloy weapons, including facsimiles of quivers produced of copper alloy, were discovered in the floors of a prominent building (Gernez & Giraud, 2019;Jean et al., 2021). ...
From the southern Levant to southeast Arabia, new technologies and social networks shaped metal production and trade in a variety of important ways. In this paper, we review the development of copper metallurgy in Early Iron Age Oman ca. 1300–800 BCE and compare it with development in the southern Levant. Settlement intensification, innovations in irrigation technologies, dromedary domestication, and the emergence of industrial copper sulfide smelting played major roles in shaping southeast Arabian societies during the late second to early first millennium BCE. Although there are similarities in the scale of copper production between the southern Levant and southeast Arabia during this period, key differences in resources impacted how societies adopted and organized metal technologies. Based on recent surveys and excavations, we discuss evidence for large-scale copper sulfide smelting at Wadi al-Raki, one of the largest copper-producing areas in Oman, and findings at ‘Uqdat al-Bakrah, where hundreds of pits and more than 600 copper-based artifacts have been recovered.KeywordsIron AgeArabiaMetallurgyCopperSocial organisationHierarchyMobility
... When attempting to define the phases of the introduction of certain shapes and decorations, it should be borne in mind that a part of the materials found in the tomb leads us to envisage its use starting from the second half of the second millennium: that is, the objects imported from the neighbouring regions, like the cylindrical faience seal, the circular gold pendant and the eye-stone with a cuneiform inscription, that reflect the Elamite and Kassite cultural components and can probably be dated to the second half of the second millennium (Frenez et al., 2020). In addition to these highly valuable objects, the presence of some spouts with tubular beaks should not be overlooked. ...
The present contribution aims to provide an overview of the large collection of soft stone vessels and lids coming from the collective tomb Long Collective Grave 1 in the Dibbā al‐Bayah funerary complex, along with a brief description and evaluation of the tomb itself. The corpus of material here discussed has been recovered during the 2012 season, and it mainly encompasses the chronological span between the second and first millennium BC. The findings are classified and organised in tables according to their chronological phase, and successively on the basis of their morphology and decorative patterns to which a major focus is addressed. Given the outstanding manufacturing of the materials, the finely incised and even plastic decorations, and their state of preservation, an assessment of such remarkable corpus, although partial, contributes significantly to the study of the diffusion and production of stone vessels in South‐East Arabia.
... Moreover, given the co-occurrence of the ichthyocentaur and goat-fish motif, it can be probably reckoned as a product of the later Kassite period. The Kassite and Kassite-Elamite presence in the Arabian Gulf is well known (e.g., Frenez et al., 2020;Potts, 2006), as well as the presence of other actors in a complex exchange network that involved the different polities overlooking this water body. Hence, also the hypothesis of 'travelling artisans' trading intercultural products should not be completely dismissed (Denton & al-Sindi, 1996, p. 191). ...
... This network somehow shrinks down during the 2nd millennium BC, to revive towards the end of the same millennium (Potts, 1990b, pp. 258-260), consistent with the presence of these jars at Tell Abraq and other items at various sites in south-eastern Arabia, including burials (e.g., Frenez et al., 2020;Pellegrino et al., 2019). ...
Ongoing excavations at Tell Abraq (Emirate of Umm al‐Quwain, U.A.E.) are revealing new aspects of this multiperiod site, which was occupied from c. 2500 BC to 300 AD. Together with substantial architecture dated to the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, relevant assemblages of archaeological materials are being collected and dated to different phases of the site’s life. Among this material, exceptional is the discovery of two jars bearing the impression of two different cylinder seals, which will be presented here. Seal impressions on any media are extremely rare in the whole of south‐eastern Arabia and strongly indicate a foreign provenance for the jars. Their iconographic study, the fabric and morphological parallels for the jars, and probable chronology will be discussed, as this can highlight transmarine connections during the late 2nd‐first half of the 1st millennium BC, as well as provide new data to address chronological issues in south‐eastern Iran itself.
... They are fast and make it possible to open new paths, through previously inaccessible arid areas. Contacts with powerful Mesopotamian and Persian neighbors, as far as the Levant region, were thus strengthened (Magee 2014;Yule 2014;Frenez, Genchi et al. 2021). ...
This project in the far omani Ja'alan aims to study a site likely to belong to the Iron Age period. This site is located at the junction of the wadi Hasid and wadi Bani Khalid, which lead directly to the sea downstream and go up towards the foothills of the Jebel Hajar upstream. The preponderant role of the point of Ja’alan in the regional exchanges of the Oman Peninsula, since the Bronze Age, with the Indus, Iran and Mesopotamia, underlines the archaeological potential of this site.
Very few cylinder seals are reported from South‐East Arabia. This paper reports on two cylinder seals that were found as heirlooms at Mleiha, UAE. The first is a Neo‐Assyrian seal with a ritual scene: kneeling worshippers around a tree of life. The second is a seal of local manufacture. The positioning of its image, a human figure holding an Arabian horned viper, is turned 90°, questioning whether it was ever used as a seal or rather worn as an amulet or bead. Local seal production and seal use are discussed. Seals from the Iron Age II suggest that the object is of local production, as does the iconography that can be linked to Iron Age snake cults in South‐East Arabia. Comparable snake representations are, however, occasionally still found in the Mleiha/PIR period.
This short communication aims to re-discuss the proposed provenance of a reworked stone vessel fragment from the Early Bronze Age site Ras Al Jinz RJ-2 along the coast of central Oman. In the original publication (Cleuziou and Tosi, 2000), it was linked with Egypt thus becoming the first and sole known connection between the Umm an-Nar communities of south-eastern Arabia and late Old Kingdom's Egypt. However, a reappraisal of the mineralogical texture of the stone used to manufacture the object seems to confidently exclude an Egyptian origin. Other possible sources are therefore discussed.
