Fig. 1. The area around Amla.
Paul Yule
In December 1990 Said b. Khalifa b. Saad al Hinai delivered some ancient iron swords, daggers, and arrowheads to the Department of Antiquities of the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture in al Khuwair before disappearing mysteriously. These artefacts were registered cursorily as deriving "from graves at Baat". Baat, near the town of Ibri, is one of the Sultanate's most impressive Pre-Islamic archaeological sites. Amla and the al Zahirah province have a richly facetted but little known prehistory. What data are known derive from the work of B. de Cardi, D.B. Doe, and of K. Frifelt(2).
In order to clear up the provenance of the objects which form the subject of this note, on the 20th of March of 1996 I turned to the good offices of the Wali at Ibri. Aided by a guide I found Said b. Khalifa at home in Amla/Wahara harab, some 42 air km to the south of Ibri. Said b. Khalifa had neglected to collect payment from the Ministry for the finds which
Fig. 1. The area around Amla.
Fig. 2 View of the southern part of the
Pre-Islamic cemetery at al Fueda to the northeast.
Fig. 3 Same to the southsouthwest.
he had turned over, and this oversight now was corrected. During my visit he showed me several sites including those where he had conducted illegal excavations. Nearby at al Fueda (N23 07' 52.2"; E56 54' 07.2"), located 1 km east of the centre of Amla (Fig. 1), he showed me an unknown cemetery of Pre-Islamic date. Sulaiman b. Aisa b. Amar al Hinai, who lives here, claimed that the artefacts submitted to the Ministry originated from a single grave excavated next to his house in 1990. If this provenance is true, then the interred individual was very heavily armed.
Some 15 subterranean single graves in the immediate vicinity of the house of Sulaiman b. Aisa were visible on the surface. Two of them showed slight depressions, traces of the illegal excavation. Within 200 m north and especially south of Sulaiman's dwelling several Pre-Islamic graves were visible owing, for example, to their disturbed roof stones which teetertottered half in the graves and half exposed on the surface (Fig. 2, 3)(3).
By virtue of the date of the finds, the graves belong toward the end of the Pre-Islamic Age. Moreover, from a brief glance at the surface of the site one has the impression that the graves are homogeneous in their form and thus perhaps their age.
The cemetery lies 2 km to the west of the foot of the Jebel Kawr. 600 m to the west lies the edge of the present-day oasis. It is directly north of the track which leads to Mawal. The position of the Pre-Islamic oasis and settlement associated with the cemetery is unclear, but it no doubt was beneath the present one. Doubtless it was smaller than the present-day one. 4 km to the southeast (N23 06'57.5"; E56 55' 49.8") of al Fueda lies the Pre-Islamic cemetery located next to a hill named Qorin es Sahhaimah, which was discovered in the mid 1970's(4). In 1995 members of our team tested two of the graves, in this cemetery which belongs largely to the Wadi Suq Period(5). Two different grave types were selected for testing, the dating of which otherwise were not known. In addition, we were seeking the northern equivalent of the Samad Culture of Central Oman.
catalogue of the finds submitted by Said b. Khalifa to the Ministry (Fig. 4, 5):
1 Dagger, Fe c30.0o(6) x 4.0 x 1.3 cm 192 g D16 DA 13067
2 Dagger tang, Fe 6.2p x 1.1p x 1.1p cm 12 g D DA 13068
3 Arrowhead, Fe 6.2 x 1.7 x 1.0 cm 15 P14 g DA 13069
4 Arrowhead, Fe 8.4p x 1.5 x 0.9 cm 17 g P18 DA 13070
5 Arrowhead, Fe 8.6p x 1.6 x 0.6 cm 19 g P18 DA 13071
6 Arrowhead, Fe 6.3p x 1.5 x 0.6 cm 11g P DA 13072
7 Arrowhead, Fe 6.0p x 1.6 x 0.6 cm 11g P 13073
8 Fragmentary sword, Fe 24.0p x 4.0 x 1.1 cm 188g S16 DA 13074
9 Fragmentary sword, Fe 41.5p x 4.7 x 1.5 cm 370g S16 DA 13075
for two reasons the few comparanda available
for the weapons are from excavations in the United Arab Emirates,
that is in Northwest Oman. First, relatively little excavation
has taken place in Southeast Arabia, including the Sultanate.
Second, Amla is located close (200-300 km) to the sites referred to below in
the U.A.E., and belongs nominally to the same cultural circle The
following classes of weapons from al Fueda are represented in the
classification of Pre-Islamic artefacts from Oman(7):
Abbreviations in the classification
This classification originated to order the late Pre-Islamic finds from Central Oman, but applies to many of the finds from Northwest Oman as well. Owing to the heterogeneity in the form of the new weapons, not all are classified here. Moreover, damaged random daggers and arrowheads are simply classified respectively as "D" and "P". Cat. no. 1 is a dagger of a kind also known from al Amqat gr. Am5 and al Maysar gr. M2720-(8). Cat. no. 3 belongs to one of the most numerous classes of Pre-Islamic arrowheads from Central Oman (P14). Two of the 277 examples are known from Mleih.a and the rest from numerous graves at Samad al Shan, al Maysar, and al Amqat. P18 arrowheads such as nos. 4 and 5 are best known from burials in Central Oman, but examples also occur in ed Dur. They are far less common than the previously noted ones. S16 swords are paralleled from Mleiha, Samad al Shan gr. S2152, and ed Dur.
Parallels for the finds introduced here occur in the periods A and B of Northwest Oman.
Period absolute dating
The periodisation for the sites Mleiha and ed Dur.
The following parallels from Mleiha (Mouton 1992) can be cited for the finds from al Fueda:
The random finds introduced here are the first
ones identifiable for the later-Islamic period in the northern
part of the Sultanate, more particularly in the al Zahirah
province. Thusfar there has been no evidence for the existence of
this period here or for its relation to the Early Iron Age in
this part of Oman. For over 900 years the northern part of the
Sultanate is archaeologically terra incognita. Nor is the
medieval period known to us except from chance finds and those
from survey. The new finds are useful as a first step in
structuring the Iron Age chronology for Central and Northern
Oman. Only excavation can shed light on this mute passage of
history.
Bibliography
B. de Cardi/S. Collier/D.B. Doe, Excavations and Survey in Oman 1974-1975, Journal of Oman Studies 2, 1976, 101-187
K. Frifelt, On Prehistoric Settlements and Chronology of the Oman Peninsula, EastWest 25, 1975, 329-423
M. Mouton, La peninsule d'Oman de la fin de l'age du fer au début de la periode sassanide. unpublished dissertation, Université de Paris I (1992)
P. Yule, Die Gräberfelder in Samad al Shan (Sultanat Oman) Materialien zu einer Kulturgeschichte. Archäologische Berichte aus dem Yemen (Mainz scheduled for 1998)
P. Yule/G. Weisgerber, Die Deutsche Archäologische Oman-Expedition, MDOG 128, 1996, 135-155
1. The author first would like to thank H.H. Sayyid Faisal b. Ali b. Faisal Al Said, Minister, and Dr A. b. Ahmed b. Bakhit al Shanfari, Director General of Archaeology, of the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture for their support over the years. The present study arose from the current project "A Structuring of the Iron Age in Eastern Arabia". Sponsored generally by the German Mining Museum in Bochum, this year's excavation was made possible by a grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation to Paul Yule.
2. B. de Cardi et al. 1976, 101-187; K. Frifelt 1975, 329-423.
3. These are visible in a site view published in 1976 (B. de Cardi et al. 1976, 176 pl.1). The tents above and to the right of "2" correspond to the location of Sulaiman b. Aisa's house. The southern part of the cemetery corresponds to "6".
4. B. de Cardi et al. 1976, 167: site 43 Mawal. Letter from Beatrice de Cardi 27 January 1991.
5. P. Yule in press; P. Yule/G. Weisgerber 1996, 145-150.
6. In the catalogue description the description is followed by the dimensions. "o" means original length. "p" means preserved length. The find classes appear in P. Yule, in press.
7. D=daggers (Dolche), P=arrowheads (Pfeilspitzen), S=swords (Schwerte).
8. For the parallels cited
from my own excavations see P. Yule in press. The dash after the
grave no. (e.g. "M2720-") means that the object cannot
be associated with any specific burial in the grave.
Email: Paul.Yule@t-online.de