Bronze Age Settlement Excavated in Saudi Arabia

Archaeology Magazine ^ | November 1, 2024 | editors / unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

Live Science reports that a 4,400-year-old settlement site has been discovered in western Saudi Arabia by a team of researchers led by Guillaume Charloux of the French National Center for Scientific Research. The settlement was made up of a central district, a residential district, and protective ramparts measuring about nine miles long. Such Bronze Age settlements in Saudi Arabia tended to be smaller than those found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Charloux said. "These were small towns connected to networks of monumental ramparts surrounding the large local oases," he explained. This small town, dubbed al-Natah, is estimated to have been home to about 500 people beginning around 2400 B.C. In the residential area of the settlement, the excavation uncovered pottery and grinding stones among at least 50 dwellings made of earthen materials. Trace evidence of cereal crops was detected. Two buildings that may have been used as administrative areas were uncovered in the center of the town, and a necropolis with tall, circular tombs was identified to the west. Charloux and his colleagues have not yet determined why al-Natah was abandoned between 1500 and 1300 B.C. "While urbanization began in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the fourth millennium B.C., our study tends to show that social complexity increased late in north-western Arabia," he concluded.

[SunkenCiv]

3-D virtual reconstruction of the Bronze Age site of al-Natah, Saudi Arabia

Charloux et al., 2024, PLOS |

[SunkenCiv]

[Waverunner]

I thought the Bronze age culture in Saudi Arabia dates into the 1960’s when they finally outlawed legal slavery.

[sphinx]

How much wetter was the climate back then? Nine miles of fortifications can’t be patrolled, much less defended, by the manpower available in a town of 500. Presumably there was a much larger population outside the town proper.

[SunkenCiv]

After the drying out and cooling of the Younger Dryas, there was still more foliage than now. Settlements in Arabia relied on natural water sources, so, oases, and while the wells endured the population did as well. The advantage to the settlements wat the low population density in surrounding areas, so, any attacks on the walled settlements were probably ineffective and outnumbered by the defenders.

https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6575/

[BenLurkin]

Ten bucks says there’s another four cities beneath it.

[SunkenCiv]

[EurekAlert!] 3D virtual reconstruction of the Bronze Age site of al-Natah. Reprinted under a CC BY license, with permission from AFALULA-RCU-CNRS, 2024.

Credit: Charloux et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0