Seminar for Arabian Studies

Abstracts - 2009 Seminar

The 2009 Seminar for Arabian Studies was held at the British Museum in London from Thursday 23rd - Saturday 25th July 2009.

All lectures were held in the Stevenson Auditorium in the Clore Centre within the British Museum.

This was supported by the MBI Al Jaber Foundation. Visit their website at: www.mbifoundation.com.

All the abstracts below are for papers which were orally presented at the Seminar, except where otherwise stated.

To download the Final Programme and Abstracts in Acrobat pdf format, please Click here

To download the Poster Abstracts in Acrobat pdf format Click here

View also the Abstracts for Posters which were presented.

ABSTRACTS

THURSDAY JULY 23rd 2009

Prehistory & Surveys
Chair: Jeffrey Rose (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

09:55 - Thursday - July 23rd

JAGHER, Reto
Institut für Prähistorische und Naturwissenschaftliche Archäologie, Universität Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Reto Jagher is a Research Associate at the Institute of Prehistory and Archaeological Science of the University of Basel where he obtained his PhD. He specialises in early hunter and gatherer archaeology in Europe and the Middle East. From 1989 to 2004 he was field director of the excavations of the Lower Palaeolithic site of Nadawiyah 'Ayn Askar (central Syria). Since 2006 he has been director of the Central Oman Palaeolithic Survey (COPS).

PUMPKIN, Christine
Institut für Prähistorische und Naturwissenschaftliche Archäologie, Universität Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Christine Pümpin holds an MSc and is a Research Associate at the Institute of Prehistory and Archaeological Science of the University of Basel. She specialised in geoarchaeology. Her professional experience in the Middle East covers Palaeolithic sites in al-Kawm (Syria) and the royal burial from the Bronze Age in Qatna Tell al-Misrife. Since 2006 she has been a full member of the Central Oman Palaeolithic Survey (COPS).

A new approach to central Omani prehistory

The Central Oman Palaeolithic Survey (COPS), initiated by the Institute for Prehistory and Archaeological Science (IPAS) of the University of Basel (Switzerland), was carried out in 2007 & 2008 in the Huqf - Al Haushi area (Central Oman). The survey targeted the earliest human occupation in the Southern Arabian Peninsula. 1,420 locations have been surveyed and 815 archaeological sites recorded. 609 of these held flint artefacts producing ample evidence of a significant and diversified prehistoric legacy in Central Oman.
Today it can be stated that the rich cultural legacy known from Levant during the Pleistocene was never in contact with its southern neighbours. This is contrary to paleozoological observations demonstrating a steady exchange from the south to the north and vice versa. Against expectations people did not follow these migrations. The discoveries from the Huqf so far do not show any influence from the Horn of Africa during the Pleistocene.
At least during the Late Pleistocene (130,000 - 10,000 years), Southern Arabia witnessed an independent cultural history, with no or insignificant influence from outside. At the Pleistocene (tentatively 30,000 to 10,000 years) a new cultural group appeared, characterised by large foliated tools. The COPS and other observations demonstrate its cultural originality, traditionally misjudged and assigned to the Neolithic. Due to the comprehensive database of the COPS project, it can definitely be stated, that compared to older cultures, the Neolithic period is not that frequent, as previously identified.
Furthermore the COPS surveys revealed important settlement activity during the Bronze and Iron Ages in the southern part of the Huqf from the coast well into the hinterland, a period when settlements withdraw to actual inhabited areas, in response to progressive aridity.

10:20 - Thursday - July 23rd

WILLIAMS, Matt
Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK

Matt graduated from the University of Leeds with a BSc (Hons) in Geography in 2004. He gained an MPhil Quaternary Science in 2005 from Cambridge, before working commercially as a geoarchaeologist. Currently Matt is a second year PhD student at the University of York whose project focus is the provenance of shell mounds on the Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia.

Shell mounds of the Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia

The Farasan Islands lie in the Southern Red Sea, in Saudi Arabian waters. Recent work has detected the presence of over 1000 shell mounds dating between 7000-2000 BC, many of which are under threat of destruction, as the islands become a focus for tourism driven development. The sites have unprecedented preservation due to the aridity of the region; work to investigate these unprovenanced deposits began with reconnaissance fieldwork in 2006, which first identified the mounds as having anthropogenic origins. Full-scale investigations followed in 2008 and 2009; these employed a number of techniques ranging from satellite image interpretation to geoarchaeology. Two key sites were chosen for excavation and detailed survey, revealing two contrasting site histories, and differing modes of evolution. Efforts to disentangle the environmental and cultural signals between the sites have followed a number of lines of enquiry, including test-pitting, geoarchaeology and landscape survey. Preliminary results reveal an intriguing story of temporal and spatial shell mound evolution at both an inter- and intra-site scale. These are being backed up with a comprehensive dating program using a variety of dating techniques, something which has rarely been attempted on sites such as these. Here we present the preliminary results of this work.

10:45 - Thursday - July 23rd

ZARINS, Juris
Archaeological Consultant, Office of the Advisor to HM the Sultan for Cultural Affairs, Salalah, Sultanate of Oman

Dr. Juris Zarins has conducted field work in Saudi Arabia, 1975-1985, as archaeological consultant to the Department of Antiquities. He has conducted field work also in Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and Oman. He is currently conducting a general survey of the Dhofar Governate, Oman and has research interests in the peninsula's Bronze Age.

NEWTON, Lynne
Assistant Archaeological Consultant, Office of the Advisor to HM the Sultan for Cultural Affairs, Salalah, Sultanate of Oman

Lynne Newton (PhD 2007 University of Minnesota, USA) is an archaeological consultant for the Office of the Advisor to HM the Sultan for Cultural Affairs in Salalah, Oman (2007-present). She conducted her dissertation fieldwork in Yemen and is currently taking part in a comprehensive archaeological survey of Dhofar.

Recent archaeological survey results in Dhofar, Sultanate of Oman

A general archaeological survey of the Governorate of Dhofar, Sultanate of Oman, conducted under the auspices of the Office of the Advisor to HM the Sultan for Cultural Affairs, has been carried out from 2008-2009. Over 250 new sites have been identified, adding to the 800 previously known sites. Identification spans from the lower Paleolithic through to the Islamic period. Geographically, sites have been identified from the Rub al Khali, Nejd, the Dhofar Hills and the coastal plains. The most outstanding results of the survey to date include the following, 1) the prolific nature of the Upper Paleolithic in the fore Nejd, 2) the Neolithic occupation of the Nejd and Dhofar Hills (8,500-3,500 BCE), 3) the expansion of cattle and ovi-caprid domestication in the Bronze Age of the Dhofar Hills and Salalah Plain (3,500-1,000 BCE), 4) Dhofar Hills Iron Age rock shelters with associated stratigraphical debris and rock paintings, 5) the recognition of early Islamic seaports on the Dhofar coast and 6) the integration of archaeological sites into the Medieval Al Baleed horizon (1,000-1,500 CE).

11:10-11:40 COFFEE

Bronze Age to Iron Age in SE Arabia
Chair: Robert Carter (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

11:40 - Thursday - July 23rd

AL-JAHWARI, Nasser
Department of Archaeology, Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman

Dr Nasser Al-Jahwari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Archaeology at Sultan Qaboos University. Dr. Al-Jahwari main interest is landscape archaeology of the Arabian Gulf, and has participated and conducted field surveys and excavations in Oman.

KENNET, Derek
Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK

Dr Derek Kennet is a lecturer in archaeology at the Department of Archaeology, Durham University working on Arabia, South Asia and the Indian Ocean. He has been working in Eastern Arabia since 1989 and has conducted fieldwork in the UAE, Kuwait and Oman.

Al-Khashba and al-Ghoryin: two levels of Umm an-Nar settlement in the Wadi Kandam (Sultanate of Oman)

This paper will begin by describing two major Umm an-Nar sites located about 10 kilometers apart in the Wadi Kandam region of Oman: al-Khashba and al-Ghoryin.
Al-Khashba is a large site extending over 912.5 hectares, including three round towers, a cemetery of around 60 tombs and some further scattered tombs, areas of pottery scatter and a large (28m x 28m) rectangular, platform, standing over two meters high and built of stone blocks up to 2.5 meters long, that has no parallels to date anywhere else in the Umm an-Nar area. A few brief notes have been published on al-Khashba but it has not yet been fully and properly described in print (Weisgerber 1980: 99-100; Potts 1990: 102; Yule 1993: 143, fig.2a-2b; Orchard & Stanger 1994: 82).
al-Ghoryin is a smaller settlement extending over 15 hectares, consisting of one round tower, a cemetery of about 49 tombs and, most importantly, an almost completely preserved domestic occupation area visible as stone wall plans on the surface. al-Ghory?n therefore presents a unique insight into a middle-sized rural settlement of the Umm an-Nar period. al-Ghoryin is, so far, an unknown site on which nothing has yet been published.
Together these two sites provide important new insights into Umm an-Nar settlement. It will be argued that they represent two distinct tiers of settlement both of which are above the lowest level of village settlement that has been recorded in the area. Having described the two sites the paper will therefore conclude by placing them within their broader context in the Umm an-Nar period and will speculate on what they tell us about the structure and hierarchy of Umm an-Nar settlement.

References:
Orchard, J. & Stanger, G. 1994. 'Third Millennium Oasis Towns and Environmental Constraints on Settlement in the Al-Hajar Region', Iraq 56: 63-100
Potts, D.T. 1990. The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity: From Prehistory to the Fall of the Achaemenid Empire, 1. Clarendon Press. Oxford
Weisgerber, G. 1980. '…und Kupfer in Oman'- Das Oman-Projekt des Deutschen Bergbau-Museums', Der Anschnitt 2-3(32): 62-110
Yule, P. 1993. 'Excavations at Samad Al Shan 1987-1991, Summary', PSAS 23: 141-153

12:05 - Thursday - July 23rd

BENOIST, Anne
CNRS, Lyon, République Française

Anne Benoist is a specialist in the Iron Age Period in Eastern Arabia. She has been conducting research at Mleiha (Emirate of Sharjah) and at Bithnah (Emirate of Fujairah). She is currently directing the French Archaeological Mission at Jawf-Hadramawt in Yemen and is in charge of excavations in Masafi for the French Archaeological Mission in the U.A.E.

New discoveries of an Iron Age cultic area at Masafi

Between 2000 and 2004 excavations at Bithnah-44 have revealed a cultic area that acted as the focus for meetings and festivities during the Iron Age II period (c.1100-600 BC). Since 2006 new excavations by A. Benoist at the site of Masafi have revealed another cultic area (Masafi-3), which is set in the vicinity of another meeting place (Masafi-1). On the basis of the data from these two sites, this paper will reconsider some aspects of territorial organisation, religion and collective life during the Iron Age II period in eastern Arabia.

12:30 - Thursday - July 23rd

MAGEE, Peter
Department of Archaeology, Bryn Mawr College, USA

HØJLUND, Flemming
Moesgård Museum, Aarhus, Kongeriget Danmark

ZAMBELLI, Amber
Department of Archaeology, Bryn Mawr College, USA

A mysterious barrier or just business as usual? First millennium BC trade in the Arabian Gulf.

When Oppenheim published his famous paper on the seafaring merchants of Ur in 1954, he noted that the first half of the first millennium witnessed a re-emergence of trade from Mesopotamia to the southern reaches of the Gulf. The reasons why trade re-emerged and a 'mysterious barrier' fell perplexed Oppenheim, but he felt that the machinations and geo-political activities of Mesopotamian powers were a likely cause. In this paper we present detailed and newly obtained geochemical data, which documents for the first time Iron Age trade between southeastern Arabia, Bahrain and Mesopotamia between 900 and 600 BC. Analysis of material from Muweilah, Hamriya, Qala'at al-Bahrain and the Assyrian capital of Nineveh are included in the paper. We discuss the implications of the results and conclude on some remarks concerning mechanisms of trade in the Gulf and the economic implications for settlements on the east Arabian littoral.

12:55-14:00 LUNCH

14:00 - Thursday - July 23rd

GALLEGO LÓPEZ, Alejandro
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Reino de España

I am a PhD Student from the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid and I am a current member of the Spanish Archaeological Mission at al-Madam (Sharjah, UAE). My research interest is the building technology and implements use in the architecture of the al-Madam oasis within the later years of the Iron Age II period.

New evidence on the usage of implements in the al-Madam area (Sharjah.U.A.E.)

The last archaeological campaigns at the Iron Age site of al-Madam (Sharjah, U.A.E.) have been dedicating special attention to several specific and interconnected issues. One focus has been the study of implements and ways of treating materials before building at a previously reported mud-brick working area (MWA1). During the last campaign, remarkably well-preserved tool marks were unearthed. The concordance in shape and appearance with other marks in the same area, together with possible chronological and geographical correlations, leads us to propose an interpretation of the usage and typology of the implements.

Islamic Arabia
Chair: Derek Kennet (Durham University)

14:25 - Thursday - July 23rd

AL-NAIM, Mashary A.
Department of Architecture, College of Architecture and Planning, King Faisal University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

City within a city: a walled city of al-Kut in Hufuf, al-Hasa, Saudi Arabia

Few Arab cities developed to contain a smaller city. This urban and architectural phenomenon emerged for reasons of security. In the sixteenth century, the Ottomans reached the Gulf coast and took immediate action to built their own administrative bases. The city of Hufuf at that time was very small and consisted of two parts, a western part (the current al-Kut neighbourhood) and a village called al-Riqayat located among the eastern palm trees farms (the current al-Rifa North). When the Ottomans came to Hufuf they developed the city and constructed a number of buildings, including the Ali Basha Mosque (the only sixteenth century mosque with a central dome in the Arabian Peninsula) and a madrassa, steam bath, emara and jail, etc. The most important action was the isolation of al-Kut from the rest of the city by building a wall, which made the neighbourhood a city within a city. This paper tries to concentrates on the smaller city of al-Kut, which became an area with special architectural and social characteristics within Hufuf.

14:50 - Thursday - July 23rd

AL-SHAIKH, Nabiel Y.
Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities, Dammam Regional Museum, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Nabiel has 27 years of experience in geology, geoarchaeology and archaeological photography in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait. He has seventeen archaeological publications in English and Arabic. Nabiel has undertaken survey and excavation of all types of archaeological sites, from all time periods in Arabia, the Gulf and the Red Sea, including underwater archaeology. He is based at Dammam Regional Museum, Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Saudi Arabia.

REELER, Claire N.
Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities, Dammam Regional Museum, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Claire has an MA in archaeology (University of Cape Town, South Africa) and has worked with GIS in archaeology in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia over the last 20 years. Since moving to Saudi Arabia in 2006, she has become involved in several archaeological projects in the region. Claire is now working as a consultant to the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The 'River Aftan': an old caravan/trade route along Wadi al-Sahbam

Wadi al-Sahbam originates in the al-Kharj region in central Saudi Arabia and is formed by the confluence of several wadis. These drainage systems were originally formed by rain falling on the Najd plateau during the Quaternary period. The Wadi al-Sahbam runs west-east to Sabkhat Mutti on the Saudi/UAE border. This study is centred on tracing the course of the wadi and the results of an archaeological investigation. Several historical sources and old maps of Arabia give the names 'River Aftan' or 'Wadi Aftan' and these possibly refer to the Wadi al-Sahbam. It is probable that these mark an old east-west caravan route. This paper will assess the likelihood that the Wadi al-Sahbam is the 'River/Wadi al-Sahbam' and part of an old caravan/trade route. Important considerations in this regard will include the geographic formation of the wadi, the presence of vegetation, wildlife and water sources and the nature of the archaeological sites found there. The relationship between the Wadi al-Sahbam and surrounding areas with significant archaeological sites, such as al-Kharj, Yabrin and Hofuf, will also be examined. Similarly, the relationship with other, well-documented trade and caravan routes in the area will be investigated.

15:15 - Thursday - July 23rd

MUNT, Harry
Faculty of Oriental Studies, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK

I am a D.Phil. student in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. My research is on the history and historiography of early Islamic Medina, and more specifically on the emergence and development of Medina as a holy city.

Writing the history of an Arabian holy city: Ibn Zabala and the origin of Medinan local historiography

The study of Arabic historiography is currently flourishing, but no survey of the field takes local histories produced in the Arabian Peninsula properly into account. In this paper, I shall begin to amend this situation by discussing the work of Ibn Zabala (d. after 199/814), the first local historian of Medina.
Unfortunately his local history has not survived, but Ibn Zabala was the most important source for later historians of Medina; al-Samhudi (d. 911/1506) cites him over 650 times in his Wafa' al-wafa. Yet he has never been subjected to the critical study that his importance merits. I will use citations from later histories to seek answers to these questions: what inspired him to compose a history of Medina? What were his main concerns and interests? What were his sources? What form did his history take?
The handbooks on Islamic historiography generally tell us that local histories can be divided into two types: chronographic and prosopographical. I intend to show that neither model fits Medinan local historiography, and that Medina's status as a holy city led Ibn Zabala to write its history in a significantly different way.

15:40-16:10 TEA

16:10 - Thursday - July 23rd

Islamic Arabia (contd.)
Chair: Andrew Petersen (Lampeter University, UK)

BELFIORETTI, Luca
Jewel of Muscat Project, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Muscat, PO Box 252, PC 100, Sultanate of Oman

Luca Belfioretti is an archaeologist and graduated from University of Bologna in Italy. His thesis addressed the reconstruction of a third-millennium BCE reed boat in the Western Indian Ocean. He has worked in Oman periodically since 2000/01, first with the University of Bologna and later for the Ministry of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate of Oman. He presently resides in Oman, and is employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a site manager on the Jewel of Muscat Project, a reconstruction of a ninth-century CE sewn-plank ship.

VOSMER, Tom
Maritime Archaeology Consultant, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Muscat, PO Box 252, PC 100, Sultanate of Oman

Dr Tom Vosmer is a maritime archaeologist specialising in watercraft of the western Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf. He is resident in Oman, working as a consultant to the government on maritime heritage, culture and archaeology. Currently he is employed as project director (construction) on the Jewel of Muscat Project, the reconstruction of an early ninth-century sewn-plank boat that will sail to Singapore in early 2010.

The al-Balid timber, preliminary overview and comparison

Sewn boat timbers have been discovered in the ruins of the pre-modern Islamic citadel at Al-Balid in Dhofar, Oman. The timbers has been re-used in the citadel for beams, shelves, sills and other structural items. These timbers are significant because they represent some of the only remains of sewn-boat technology in the western Indian Ocean region. Others include boat timbers from Qusair Qadim on the Red Sea, and the 9th century Belitung wreck found in Indonesia. This form of sewn-boat technology was used through millennia in the Western Indian Ocean.
Identification of the Al Balid wood has revealed a variety of timbers including teak (Tectona grandis) and Terminalia species. Three C14 samples returned dates of 1020, 1260 and 1460 CE ± 40 years. Many of the timbers are planking - some with the stitching that joined them together still extant; others are beams and frames. Dowels, used to lock planks in position relative to each other, are present in some planks. Furthermore, resin identified as bitumen originating from south western Iran was found on two of the timber samples.
This paper intends to compare the technical characteristics of the individual al-Balid timbers with other forms of historical evidence to discuss changes in maritime technology in the Western Indian Ocean. Technological adaptation and exchange is complicated and fluid, but it is particularly the case for maritime technology. Differences in methods or structure can result from a diversity of influences: the availability of materials used, technology exchange, use of the vessel, even culture, religion, superstition or even personal taste. The al-Balid timbers add a valuable contribution to our understanding of pre-modern ship construction in the area, and demonstrate that different techniques and materials were inventively being adapted for use in diverse regions.

16:35 - Thursday - July 23rd

ROUGEULLE, Axelle
CNRS Umr 8167, République Française

Dr A. Rougeulle (CNRS - UMR 8167) is an archaeologist of the Islamic period, specialised in exchange networks in the Eastern Islamic world and the Indian Ocean during the mediaeval period - the harbours, land and maritime routes, trade and merchandises, especially the ceramics. Her main regions of interest are Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and now Oman where she started a new research project at the harbour site of Qalhât.

The Qalhat Project: New research on the mediaeval harbour site of Qalhat (Oman)

Qalhat, one of the most impressive sites in Oman and one of the most famous medieval harbour cities of southern Arabia, has never been studied with the exception of a single season of excavation. In 2007, the Ministry of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate asked the author to begin a project of study of development of the site. The first season was held in 2008.
A DEM and kite photo covering were realized, and the analyse of the urban development of the city was started by the identification of different quarters and main buildings. The Friday Mosque was discovered and its last two architectural periods recognized which dated to the 13th-14th and 15th centuries - both with distinctive glazed tiles decoration. A ceramic kiln was also discovered and excavated, producing a great deal of information on the local ceramics, unglazed, glazed and painted wares, of the 14th-15th centuries.
Part of a settlement unit was excavated and cleared for further restoration. This consisted of a large house and a small terraced mosque in the NW quarter of the city. Finally, a stratigraphical sounding reached the bedrock 6m below the modern surface level, yielding occupation layers dated from the 12th to the 16th century. The history of Qalhat, its urbanism and the trade networks of this main Hormuzi harbour are therefore now emerging from obscurity.

17:00 - Thursday - July 23rd

BOULOGNE, Stéphanie
CNRS Lamm Aix en Provence, Aix-en-Provence, République Française & IFPO Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic

Stéphanie gained her PhD from the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). She is a research fellow at the Laboratoire d'Archéologie Médiévale Méditéranenne and at the IFPO Damascus and her research focuses upon glass of the Medieval to Early Modern periods in the Middle-East. She has recently been awarded a Rakow Grant from The Corning Museum of Glass, USA.

Glass bangles of Shi'Hr: a corpus of new data (15th-17th centuries) for the understanding of glass bangles manufacturing in Yemen

The excavations conducted in the medieval harbour of al-Shi'Hr on the Indian Ocean in Hadramaut (Yemen) by C. Hardy-Guilbert (UMR 8167) had revealed more than 1700 glass fragments, among them 185 multi-colored glass bangles and 321 glass vessels fragments. The bangles are mostly dated to the 15th-17th centuries. Most of them are made of green glass paste similar to the majority of glass vessel artefacts. Polychrome samples (106 samples) are generally of large diameter, enhanced with diverse decoration such as prunts. These are well known in the local area, for example at Kawd am-Saila, and elsewhere in the Middle East (Egypt, Great Syria). By contrast, monochrome items are represented by 79 samples, generally of small diameter, many being smooth examples, others decorated with ribs. These are well-known in the Orient, especially in the Middle East.
Al-Shi'Hr is the second site, after Kawd am-Saila, to present a full corpus of this kind of glass ornaments. In addition, many crucibles were registered, and ovens remains discovered, suggesting a local production at least some of the finds. This paper will focus on the provenance of the glass artifacts, as well as their dating, and typological groups, including comparative data and a survey of textual sources. The results will be compared to data on bangles dated to medieval and later times in Central Jordan, for which archaeometric studies, coupled with typological and ethnographic information, have suggested a foreign provenance (India, Asia), mixed in with local products. The study of the Shi'Hr glass bangles will present new data on the organization of glass bangle production in medieval and later times.

The MBI Al Jaber Public Lecture

Ancient Arabia and the Written Word
M.C.A. Macdonald (University of Oxford, UK)
18:30 - Thursday - Stevenson Lecture Theatre
(Limited Seating)

Followed by a RECEPTION hosted by the MBI al-Jaber Foundation

FRIDAY JULY 24th 2009
Morning Parallel Sessions

Special Session: The Development of Arabic as a Written Language

Throughout most of the pre-Islamic period Arabic was a purely spoken language, which co-existed with many written languages in the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. In Late Antiquity and the Early Islamic period, Arabic began to be written and eventually displaced almost all its predecessors to become the written language par excellence of the region. Why and how did this happen? What dialects developed from the literary language? Why was Nabataean script used to write Arabic, and in what ways was it altered and improved to express the language? How was writing used in the early Islamic period, and who by? How long did the 'oral' culture persist after the development of written Arabic, and why did it do so? These are only some of the questions that will be addressed by an international group of scholars at this Special Session of the Seminar for Arabian Studies.

09:30 - Introduction & Chair: ROBIN, Christian (Collège de France, République Française)

Dr Christian Robin has worked on the epigraphy and history of pre-Islamic Arabia, particularly Yemen, for four decades. He is Directeur de Recherche in the CNRS and for many years was the director of the Institut de Recherches et d’Études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman, in Aix-en-Provence. He now directs the UMR 8167, Orient et Méditerranée, of the CNRS and is a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. He has published extensively on, among much else, Arabia in Late Antiquity and the development of the Arabic script, and is leading a Saudi-French archaeological and epigraphic survey of the Najran area in southern Saudi Arabia.

09:40 - Friday - July 24th

MACDONALD, Michael
Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, UK

Michael Macdonald has worked for the last 35 years on the languages and scripts used in ancient Arabia, and on the many and varied uses of literacy in the Peninsula. He has also written on the history of the nomads and the rock art of Arabia. He has published numerous articles, some of which have been collected in a book entitled Literacy and Identity in pre-Islamic Arabia, which was published earlier this year. He has lived and worked in the Middle East for many years; and is a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.

Why did Arabic remain a purely spoken language for so long?

The populations of pre-Islamic western Arabia produced vast numbers of formal and informal inscriptions and documents in a variety of languages and dialects. However, in all of these, the dialects which we would recognize as 'Arabic' are represented in only a handful of inscriptions in a variety of scripts. Yet these sparse, scattered, exceptional texts suggest that Arabic was being spoken over a long period and a wide area. Why was it not until the sixth century AD that Arabic came to be written habitually and thus develop a dedicated script? It will come as no surprise that this paper will not provide definitive answers to these questions. It will, however, examine the milieu in which Arabic existed as a purely spoken tongue alongside numerous written languages, and will suggest some possible explanations for this.

09:55 - Friday - July 24th

NEHMÉ, Laïla
UMR 8167, Orient et Méditerranée, CNRS, Paris, République Française

Laïla is a researcher at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in Paris and co-director of the Madâ'in Sâlih Archaeological Project. She is a pecialist of Nabataean epigraphy and urban spaces of Petra and Hegra. She is also part of the Darb al-Bakra survey project, directed by A. al-Ghabban.

AL-GHABBAN, Ali
Supreme Commission for Tourism of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Professor Ali Ibrahim al-Ghabban is the Vice-President of the Supreme Commission for Tourism of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Having received his doctorate at the University of Aix-en-Provence, he then taught for many years at King Saud University, Riyadh, before being appointed to the Supreme Commission in 2003. He has made numerous epigraphic and archaeological surveys including the spectacular finds of late Nabataean and early Arabic inscriptions on the ‘Darb al-Bakra’, the ancient road between Petra and Hegra, which he discovered.

New very late Nabataean and early Arabic inscriptions and a comparison of their content

This paper will present some representative examples of two categories of inscriptions: 1) 'late Nabataean', that is inscriptions containing dates which place them in the 3rd century AD or later (4th and 5th), or those in which the letter forms can be dated, at least provisionally, to the interval between the 3rd and the 5th centuries; 2) 'early Arabic', that is the earliest Arabic inscriptions dated to the decades following AD 622. As a corollary of this, we shall discuss the 'transitional' period and the criteria, which can be used to determine whether we are dealing with a late Nabataean or an early Arabic text. We shall focus, in this paper, not only on the characteristics of letter forms and the ligatures between them but also on the possible differences in the formulae between the 'classical' Nabataean graffiti and the 'late Nabataean' ones as well as on possible signs of breaks or shifts from one writing tradition to another. Most of the examples that will be presented come from Saudi Arabia and a large proportion of them were discovered during the Darb al-Bakra Survey Project, directed by A. al-Ghabban.

10:30 - Friday - July 24th

HOYLAND, Robert
Department of Arabic and Middle East Studies, St Andrews University, UK

Robert is Professor of Arabic and Middle East History at St Andrews University. He is author of Arabia and the Arabs as well as a series of publications on the history of the late antique and early Islamic Middle East.

Power, patronage and Arabic inscriptions

Recently there have been a number of Qur'an folios sold in auction houses that would seem to date to the reign of the caliphs 'Uthman (644-56), 'Ali (656-60) and Mu'awiya (661-680) and also a number of rock inscriptions have been discovered that belong to the same period. Evidently the use of Arabic for a variety of purposes was a feature of the very earliest stages of the Islamic state. This is not an obvious development. The key languages of the Middle East for hundreds of years before Islam had been Greek and Aramaic. This talk will explore the background to this rise to prominence of the Arabic language, in particular, the ways in which certain Arab groups had worked their way up the upper echelons of imperial society, becoming members of the elite, even if only at a local level and the ways in which this newly-acquired power manifested itself in the epigraphic record.

10:55 - Friday - July 24th

LARCHER, Pierre
Département d'études moyen-orientales, Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I, République Française

Pierre Larcher : Ph.D (1980) and Docteur d'Etat (habilitation, 1996), University of Paris - Sorbonne Nouvelle, is Professor of Arabic Linguistics at the University of Aix-en-Provence (France) and researcher at the IREMAM (CNRS). He lived in the Arab World (Syria, Libya, Morocco) between 1971 and 1982, holding several research and teaching positions. He has published extensively in different fields of Arabic and Semitic Linguistics (Le Système verbal de l'arabe classique, 2003; (co-edited with P. Cassuto) La Sémitologie, aujourd'hui, 2000 and La formation des mots dans les langues sémitiques, 2007), and translated Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry into French (Les Mu'allaqât, 2000; Le Guetteur de Mirages. Cinq poèmes préislamiques, 2004).

In search of a standard: dialect choices in the development of Classical Arabic

The few surviving preislamic inscriptions in both the Arabic language and the Arabic script show the absence of a standard written language. We will take as a sample of variation the inscriptions of Jabal Usays (528-529 CE) and Harrân (568 CE). A meticulous examination of the first inscription suggests that its author (a soldier) writes the way he speaks and that he speaks a caseless variety of Arabic. In this context, we will examine the famous bilingual Greek-Arabic papyrus PERF 558 (22H/643 CE), in which the name Ibn Abû Qîr occurs twice. The Arabic Abû Qîr is the Greek Apa Kyros. In order to get to the form Abû Qîr, one has to go through the form Abâ Qîr, reinterpreted as the accusative of the three-case (triptotic) inflection Abû/Abâ/Abî. Both types of Arabic, the so-called Old Arabic (inflected) and the so-called Neo-Arabic (non-inflected) coexist, but the scribe uses the New Arabic type. However, it is the Old Arabic type, which was codified and became Classical Arabic. We will try to understand the reasons of this choice.

11:20-11:50 COFFEE

Special Session: The Development of Arabic as a Written Language (Contd.)
Chair: Robert Hoyland (University of St. Andrews, UK)


11:50 - Friday - July 24th

DEROCHE, François
École Pratique des Hautes Études, IVe section: "Antiquités et codicologies arabes", République Française

François Deroche is a specialist in Arabic manuscripts: his contributions have been devoted to codicology and the history of the book in the Islamic world.

The Codex Parisino-petropolitanus and the Hijazi scripts

The disjecta membra of the Codex Parisino-petropolitanus, an early Qur'anic manuscript, are of great interest for the history of the Arabic script as a book script. The production of this copy involved five copyists and their various hands witness the state of development of the script during the second half of the 1st century of the hijra. The paper will investigate the relationship of the manuscript with other written documents of the period as well as the way in which the copyists made use of the Arabic script when transcribing the Qur'ân.

12:15 - Friday - July 24th

GEORGE, Alain
School of Arts, Culture and Environment (ACE), The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Alain George holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and is Lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Edinburgh. He has published several articles on early Qur'anic calligraphy; his book about the origins and development of this art form, The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy, is currently in press. In addition to calligraphy, his present research interests include Umayyad art and the impact of the Indian Ocean trade on early Islamic material culture.

On the roots and context of the Hijazi corpus

The earliest manuscripts of the Qur'an are of crucial importance to the history of Arabic script - and indeed, of the Qur'anic text. In this paper, we will attempt to place the Hijazi corpus in a broad historical context that ranges from the 6th century to the early Umayyad period. Through an analysis of ruling, quire structure and pen type, we will identify, below the most visible layers of a manuscript, affinities of technique that lead back to older manuscript traditions of the Middle East, notably Biblical. Together with information provided by early Arabic texts, this will open new perspectives on the nature of the underlying process.

12:40 - Friday - July 24th

PORTER, Venetia
Middle East Department, British Museum, London, UK

The use of writing in magic

Early in the Islamic era clusters of recognizable Arabic letters began to be used on a variety of materials including Arabic papyri and amulets. The style is often referred to as Linear Kufic and it is characterised by the use of early Arabic letterforms. Clearly magical in intent and the uses of these inscriptions belong within a vocabulary that includes 5-pointed stars and other elements. Once established the style continues to be used in magical contexts even to the present day. Magical scripts, which include Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Yemeni Himyaritic scripts are described by a number of medieval writers. This paper will examine the use of these magical scripts and Linear Kufic in particular. It will look at the form the inscriptions take and what meaning they may have. It will question whether these are simply abracadabra or whether they can be interpreted as survivals from the pre-Islamic period adapted for new purposes.

13:05 - Friday - July 24th

SCHOELER, Gregor
Orientalisches Seminar, Universität Basel, Switzerland

Born 1944 in Waldshut,Germany. From 1963-72 he undertook Oriental Studies, esp. Islamic Studies and Semitic Languages at the Universities of Marburg (Lahn), Frankfurt (Main) and Giessen in Germany. In 1972 he completed his PhD at the University of Giessen. 1973-74 Assistant at the German Orient-Institut in Beirut/Lebanon. 1981 Habilitation at the University of Giessen. Since 1982 Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Basel/Switzerland. 2000 Lectures given at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes à la Sorbonne in Paris. 2006 Award Delalande-Guérineau of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Institut de France) for the book Ecrire et transmettre dans les débuts de l'islam (Paris, 2002; Englisch Transl. The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read. Edinburgh 2009).

The relationship of literacy and memory in the 2nd/8th century

The relationship between literacy and memory (or orality) in early Islam is complex and has been difficult for scholars to appreciate. We are confronted with the problem especially in the 2nd/8th century, for in that century
- there was a long-lasting discussion among traditionists whether or not it was permitted to write down hadiths and other reports (f.i. historical accounts); many scholars took the view that this material was to be memorized and transmitted orally only; in spite of that, a lot of material was written down, a fact becoming evident from the polemics against this practice
- most important and very comprehensive works (f.i. Ibn Ishâq's K. al-Maghâzî, Mâlik b. Anas' al-Muwatta', also hadîth compilations, f.i. Ma'mar b. Râshid's K. al-Jâmi') came into being, works the original forms of which are lost without exception, but which survived in later versions (recensions); this fact led scholars to the assumption that these works were transmitted 'orally' until their definitive redaction
- the first writings appeared that were edited definitively by their authors and intended for a reading public (mostly in the form of epistles, rasâ'il; 'Abd al-Hamîd's and some of Ibn al-Muqaffa's works, Sîbawayhis Kitâb).
This complex situation can be explained by the unique development of Arabic literature. Most of the early works (including the Koran, for some 25 years) and even entire genres (but not the rasâ'il) were not yet 'literature' initially, but, at a later stage of development, eventually became literature. For a long time, memory (or orality) played a significant role in keeping, disseminating and transmitting these works.

13:30-14:30 LUNCH

Focus Session: Current Fieldwork in Qatar
Organizer & Chair: Derek Kennet (Durham University, UK)

There has been a notable increase in the amount of archaeological fieldwork being conducted in Qatar from the Parthian/Hellenistic to Islamic periods. Many of the researchers involved have offered papers to this year's Seminar reporting on their work. Much of this research (although not all) is still in its early stages but it is resulting in important new information. It was felt that it would be useful to support this work by putting these papers into a Focus Session - adding time for a general discussion on the results, the issues faced, the methods used and how researchers might co-ordinate their work.

09:30 - Friday - July 24th

BEARDMORE, Rebecca
Visual and Spatial Technology Centre (VISTA), Birmingham University, Birmingham, UK.

Rebecca Beardmore is a post-excavation officer at ‘Birmingham Archaeology’. Her research interests include the prehistory of arid environments, in particular late Bronze Age Kazakhstan, and the applications of databases and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in heritage management. She has previously worked on surveys of rock art and archaeological excavations in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

CUTTLER, Richard Thorburn
Visual and Spatial Technology Centre (VISTA), Birmingham University, Birmingham, UK.

Richard Cuttler is a senior project manager at Birmingham University. He has undertaken archaeological surveys and excavations in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. His research interests include Palaeolithic and Holocene Arabia, landscape survey, the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for cultural resource management, and the application of geophysics in archaeology.

KALLWEIT, Heiko
Honorary Research Fellow, Birmingham University, Birmingham, UK.

Heiko Kallweit studied Archaeology, Mineralogy, Geoscience and Ethnology at Freiburg University and completed a doctorate on the Bronze Age and Neolithic Occupation in the Wadi Dhahr, Yemen in 1997. He has since worked on research projects in Jordan, the UAE, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait. His research interests include the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods in the Near and Middle East, the Palaeoecology, fauna and flora of arid landscapes and the archaeology of nomadic groups.

RAMSEY, Eleanor
VISTA, Birmingham University, Birmingham, U.K.

Eleanor Ramsay graduated with a degree in Ancient History and Archaeology from Birmingham University in 1994 and worked for several years as an archaeological supervisor. As a researcher at ‘Birmingham Archaeology’, her recent projects have included the Humber Regional Environmental Characterisation Project, Qatar Remote Sensing project (including Historic Environment Record development and GIS training), the Longstanton intra-site GIS project, and the West Coast Palaeolandscapes project. Her research interests are mainly focused on GIS, 3-D visualisation and marine remote sensing.

AL-NAIMI, Faisal Abdulla
Antiquities Department, Qatar Museums Authority, Doha, State of Qatar

Faisal Abdulla Al-Naimi is Head of the Antiquities Department at the Qatar Museums Authority. His research interests include the management of the archaeological resource of Qatar, prehistoric lithics technology and archaeological field survey.

FITCH, Simon
VISTA, Birmingham University, Birmingham, U.K.

Simon Fitch took his undergraduate degree in Geology at Durham University (UK) and his postgraduate degree in Landscape Archaeology at Birmingham University. He maintains research interests in the use of visual and immersive technologies in the investigation of marine geophysical data, and has been an external advisor to geophysical software companies. He has worked on a variety of projects from Oman to the USA. His current research interests are now focused upon marine prehistory across the globe.

Reconstruction of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene palaeogeography of Qatar using remotely sensed datasets, and the implications for the integration of such data into the National Monument Record for Qatar

At the peak of the last glacial maximum, approximately 18,000 years ago, the Gulf was entirely free of marine influence. The area would have been populated, and almost certainly contains one of the most detailed and comprehensive records of a Late Quaternary and Holocene landscape. Despite this the management of this resource has been perceived as being beyond the reach of archaeologists, a 'terra incognita'.
As a result of recent developments in remote sensing this should no longer be considered the case. Countries such as Qatar are in a unique position in that oil exploration has provided extensive datasets that can be used to model past landscapes and inform future research within the region. However, the true value of such datasets can only be achieved if they are integrated as part of a larger inventory of heritage resources. Over the past year Qatar has developed a new National Monument Record for this purpose. This involved the development of data standards for recording and archiving currently known and new archaeological sites
The integration of remotely sensed marine and terrestrial data into the National Monument Record has facilitated pro-active management and monument protection, from designation and curation to forward planning.

10:00 - Friday - July 24th

SCHREIBER, Juergen
Qatar Museum Authority, Doha, State of Qatar

Juergen Schreiber received his PhD from Munich University on the topic of ‘Oasis Settlements in Oman’. From 1995 to 2007 he has worked on different excavation and survey-projects in Oman. He has been director of the excavations at Umm al-Ma. in Qatar from 2008.

Excavations at Umm al-Maa, Qatar - preliminary report on the first two campaigns

The vast prehistoric cairn field of Umm al-Maa is located on Qatar's north-west coast, some 80 km north-west of Doha. First mentioned by the Danes in the late 1950s during their work in the Gulf region, ten graves were excavated, but are still unpublished. In the late 1980s and early 1990s this work was followed by a Japanese team. They excavated another ten of these tombs and suggested, at least for some of them, a date between 100 BC/100 AD.
On behalf of Qatar Museums Authority work was resumed at Umm al-Maa in February 2008 and two campaigns of excavations were conducted since then. The preliminary results of these two seasons of excavation will be presented in this paper.

10:30 - Friday - July 24th

GUÉRIN, Alexandrine
La Mission Française Archéologique à Qatar, Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, Lyon, République Française

Alexandrine has been in charge of the French Archaeological Mission in Qatar since 2002. She directs a research program on settlement patterns in a desert context during the Islamic Period, especially that of the Abbasid Period.

AL-NAIMI, Faisal Abdulla
Antiquities Department, Qatar Museums Authority, Doha, State of Qatar

Faisal Abdulla Al-Naimi is Head of the Antiquities Department at the Qatar Museums Authority. His research interests include the management of the archaeological resource of Qatar, prehistoric lithics technology and archaeological field survey.

Using Pottery study to understand a district in the Abbasid village of Murwab (9th century - Qatar)

Starting with the ceramics discovered in stratigraphic contexts at Murwab, the combination of various studies makes it possible to assign particular functions to spatial units, i.e. habitation and artisanal zone. Typologies of form and wares are cross-referenced with the stratigraphy and the find-spots of ceramic fragments.

11:00 - Friday - July 24th - Questions & discussion

11:20-11:50 COFFEE

11:50 - Friday - July 24th

PETERSEN, Andrew
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Wales, Lampeter, UK

Andrew Petersen is Director of Research in Islamic Archaeology at the University of Wales, Lampeter. Previously he has been Assistant Professor of Islamic Archaeology at the UAE University in al-'Ayn and Research Officer for the CBRL, based in Amman Jordan. He has carried out fieldwork throughout the Islamic world including Oman, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Turkmenstan and on the Swahili coast of East Africa. He is particularly interested in the archaeology of the middle and late Islamic periods in the Levant and Arabia. In addition to his specific research interests, Andrew is interested in developing the field of Islamic archaeology both as an academic discipline through an edited series in the journal Antiquity and as a way of improving cultural understanding.

Qal'at al-Ruwaydah, Qatar

This paper will discuss the results of the first season of excavations at Qal'at al-Ruwaydah sponsored by the Qatar Museums Authority and carried out by a team from the University of Wales, Lampeter. al-Ruwaydah is a large Islamic period site stretching over an area of more than two kilometres along the beach of a shallow bay on the northern tip of Qatar. In fact the site comprises at least seven discrete areas including an extensive prehistoric component. Although the site has been noted before, this is the first time the site has been investigated through archaeological excavation and topographic survey. Preliminary findings indicate that the main site was inhabited from the medieval to the early modern period (c. 11th - 18th centuries) although this dating is subject to modification based on further analysis of the finds and other dating materials. Excavation concentrated on the most visible feature of the site, which is a fortress divided into four separate courtyards. The principal aim of the 2009 excavation was to identify the building sequence of the fort and also get some idea of its foundation date. The results of the excavation will be discussed within the context of other sites in northern Qatar and in relation to other maritime sites in the Gulf.

12:20 - Friday - July 24th

WALMSLEY, Alan
Institut for Tværkulturelle og Regionale Studier, Københavns Universitet, København, Kongeriget Danmark

Alan Walmsley is Professor of Islamic Archaeology and Art (University of Copenhagen) and conducts fieldwork in Qatar and Jordan. He uses material culture to document social and economic change in formative historical periods, specifically the central Arabian Gulf in the second millennium and Syria-Palestine between the sixth and eleventh centuries.

Al-Zubarah and its hinterland: archaeology and heritage

In anticipation of a major new project at the extensive Islamic-period walled site of Al-Zubarah on the west coast of northern Qatar, an exploratory program of archaeological survey work, excavations and environmental studies was undertaken from January to May this year. At the invitation of the Qatar Museums Authority - Antiquities Department, the University of Copenhagen fielded a team of thirteen lead by Alan Walmsley (Director, Excavations) and Ingolf Thuesen (Director, Heritage) with the intention of completing a preliminary assessment, recording and survey of Al-Zubarah and its hinterland, as well as initial reconnaissance of other North Qatar sites. This paper will focus on the results of the work in and around Al-Zubarah, including the mapping of the site, the geomorphological and archaeological investigation of its hinterland including associated sites, and two areas of investigative open-area excavations within the town of Al-Zubarah. Overall, the extraordinary complexity of the natural and human environment encountered through this work is being revealed, and suggests that in the future many more rewarding outcomes can be expected in the study of Qatari archaeology, history and heritage.

12:50 - Friday - July 24th - Questions & discussion

13:10-14:30 LUNCH

Related papers to The Development of Arabic as a Written Language
Chair: Venetia Porter (British Museum, UK)

14:30 - Friday - July 24th

FRASER, Marcus
Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Marcus Fraser is an independent Islamic Art specialist and curatorial consultant. He was formerly head of Islamic and Indian Art at Sotheby's, London, and senior specialist for Islamic Manuscripts. He has an MA (Hons) from Edinburgh University in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies (1990) and is now reading for a PhD (part time), also at Edinburgh University, on the subject of early Qur'an manuscripts and calligraphy.

Qur'ans in 'Hijazi' Scripts: marshalling the evidence

Qur'ans written in so-called 'Hijazi' scripts have long been associated with a very early period of production, possibly as early as the first century Hijri. While studies on palaeographic, codicological and textual aspects of these fragmentary manuscripts provide a growing body of evidence to support their early dating, the precise corpus of relevant material remains elusive. Most of the studies have focussed on single or small groups of fragments and incomplete manuscripts. No-one has yet, to my knowledge, gathered, described and illustrated the complete known extant corpus of this material. Moreover, new discoveries of fragments of this type in the last thirty or so years have provided important additions to the previously known corpus.
This paper will provide an overview of all the known extant fragments of Qur'ans in 'Hijazi' scripts. It will list them, describe them and attempt to link currently dispersed fragments from the same original codices. It will then enumerate them, both in terms of the number of separate fragments known today and how many original codices these might have constituted. This basic gathering of information is considered crucial to the effectiveness of studies in this field, and it is hoped that the understanding of early Arabic scripts and early Qur'ans in general, as well as this researcher's own palaeographic studies, will benefit from the exercise.

14:55 - Friday - July 24th

LIEBHABER, Samuel J.
Middlebury College, Vermont, USA

Sam Liebhaber is an Assistant Professor of Arabic and International Studies at Middlebury College. His dissertation, 'Bedouin Without Arabic: Language, Poetry and the Mahra of Southeast Yemen' (University of California, Berkeley, 2007), provides a close analysis of the poetic traditions and sociolinguistic bearing of the Mahra, one of the few, non-Arabic language groups remaining on the Arabian Peninsula.

Written Mahri, Mahri FuB'Ha and their implications for early historical arabic

As recently as 2004, written poetic texts in the Mahri language of Southeast Yemen began to appear at the initiative of native speakers who had a serious interest in preserving and promoting their linguistic heritage. As one of the few, surviving non-Arabic languages indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula, the Mahri language remained oral prior to 2004 and is still essentially inaudible at the margins of the sociolinguistic framework that characterizes the Arabic-speaking world. However, the mixed oral-literate environment of al-Mahra enables us to draw parallels between it and the environment that obtained for Arabic speakers at the cusp of literacy in the late Jahili and early Islamic eras. This paper will draw on fieldwork that I undertook in al-Mahra between 2003-2008, during which time I analyzed the impact of writing on the poetic idiom of one of al-Mahra's most prolific poets. Specifically, I will examine how Mahri-language literacy has forced a reappraisal of native valuations of linguistic 'quality', with close reference to a commonly held, yet far from consensual, notion of an exemplary idiom known locally as Mahri 'fuB'Ha'. By examining the shifting valences of Mahri 'fuB'Ha' in recent decades, we can shed some light on the composition and evolution of Arabic fuB'Ha in its pre- and early historical guises.

15:20-15:50 TEA

Afternoon Parallel Sessions
Landscape & Food Resources
Chair: Mark Beech (ADACH, UAE)


15:50 - Friday - July 24th

DARLES, Christian
École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Toulouse, 83, rue Aristide Maillol, BP 10629, 31106 Toulouse cedex 1, République Française

La généralisation du bois chez les bâtisseurs du Yémen antique

Les recherches archéologiques menées depuis plus de 25 ans ont permis de bien comprendre l’art des bâtisseurs de l’Antiquité. L’architecture édifiée en Arabie du Sud est de mieux en mieux connue et chaque campagne de fouille permet de recueillir de nouveaux témoignages sur les modes constructifs mis en oeuvre durant l’Antiquité. Si l’architecture monumentale, comme celle des temples par exemple, souvent très bien conservée, a été parfaitement analysée et a fait l’objet de nombreuses publications, il n’en va pas de même pour l’architecture civile destinée principalement à l’habitat résidentiel, constitué par des maisons édifiées au-dessus de hauts soubassements massifs maçonnés. Cette architecture est caractérisée par un usage important de pièces de bois qui constituent une ossature tridimensionnelle dont le contreventement est assuré par un remplissage composé généralement de briques crues. D’autres utilisations du bois sont attestées dans des configurations constructives différentes : des planchers, des poutres et des poteaux confectionnés en bois ont été découverts lors des différentes fouilles. Les éléments de décors qui nous sont parvenus doivent être comparés aux panneaux en dalle de calcaire dont les motifs reprennent des assemblages de menuiserie. Cette pétrification du bois donne également de multiples informations sur les encadrements et les systèmes de fermetures des fenêtres de ces édifices.

16:15 - Friday - July 24th

BANDYOPADHYAY, Soumyen
School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Topographic conceptions in Omani architecture

This paper aims to discuss two key themes persistent within the decorative tradition of Omani architecture: stars and date palms. The research is based on material collected through fieldwork in a'Dakhliyah region, which includes an AHRC-supported project to document the decorated maharib of Oman. It adopts a phenomenological approach to understand the role and overlapping meaning of these motifs within the traditional architectural context. Representations of these motifs - often used interchangeably - are frequently set within an 'endless knot' motif. While the latter has been variously employed throughout the Middle East to depict time or the endless, fathomless expanse of time or topography, the inset stellar motifs - echoing Sufi mystical conceptions of illumination - represent temporal 'moments'. While this celestial topography plays an important role in the Omani decorated maharib, entrances to Omani dwellings are frequently adorned with the representation of a more immediate physical topography, employing the 'endless knot' in conjunction with a planimetric representation of the palm. An attempt to connect the celestial topography and the physical one has been the basis of the complex water distribution strategy of the falaj irrigation system. The paper also aims to study the close connection between these topographic conceptions and articulation of thresholds (both sacred and domestic).

15:50-18:30 - Workshop for Arabic as a Written Language

Workshop to develop discussions resulting from the Special Session and related papers. Seminar Participants are also invited to bring photographs of particular inscriptions, manuscripts, documents, coins and objects of relevance to the subject of the Special Session. If you wish to present such an item please contact the Secretary well in advance with details of the object with details on how you wish to present it (digital photographs preferred). The Sackler Room is located to the right of the entrance into the BP Lecture Theatre.

18:30 RECEPTION
Clore Centre, The British Museum

SATURDAY JULY 25th 2009
Arabic And Modern South Arabian
Chair: Michael Macdonald (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, UK)

09:30 - Saturday - July 25th

NAÏM, Samia
Lacito, (FRE 2204) CNRS, 7 rue Guy Moquet, Bat. 23, F-94801 Villejuif cedex, République Française

Samia Naim is a researcher at the CNRS-Paris. A linguist who has specialised in Semitic languages, she is specifically interested in the Arabic dialects of the Middle East and Arabia, which she studies from a historical, comparative and typological perspective. Samia has published many articles and books about the dialects of Sanaa and Zab.d such as 2009. LfArabe yemenite de Sanaa (Leuven-Paris-Dudley: Peeters) and 1995 Yemen (Arles: Actes Sud). She has also contributed to, or directed, interdisciplinary works on contemporary Yemen, such as 2001. Yemen: dfun itineraire a lfautre (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose) and 1995 Sanaa: architecture domestique et societe (Paris: CNRS Editions).

The semantic structure of motion verbs in the dialect of Zabid (Tihamah)

Les verbes de mouvement-déplacement, dans le dialecte de Zabid, sont susceptibles d'être répartis en deux paradigmes, en fonction du degré de complexité de leur structure sémantique. Les plus complexes fusionnent les notions de temporalité, de trajectoire, de territorialité et de finalité. Pour l'expression du mouvement et des éléments sémantiques qui lui sont sous-jacents, deux procédés sont ainsi attestés dans la langue 1) la constitution intrinsèque du référent, par fusion, grammaticalisation, lexicalisation… 2) la constitution extrinsèque du référent, par individuation ou satellisation des qualités de l'expérience (particule verbale, adposition…). En fonction du groupe verbal auquel il est fait appel, l'expression linguistique du déplacement va recourir ainsi à l'un ou l'autre procédé. Mais cette répartition n'est pas absolue. Elle est fonction du contexte et de l'univers dans lequel prend place le déplacement.
On s'intéressera à la structure sémantique de ces verbes, à leur morphologie et au déploiement de leur sens en emploi. De même qu'on s'interrogera sur les schèmes conceptuels qu'ils véhiculent en temps que moyen d'accès aux représentations mentales que les individus se forment de leur environnement.

9:55 - Saturday - July 25th

WATSON, Janet C. E.
School of Languages, University of Salford, Salford, UK

Janet Watson is Professor of Arabic Linguistics at the University of Salford. She has published widely on Yemeni Arabic dialects, and on the phonology and morphology of modern Arabic dialects. She has recently begun to conduct research on the Modern South Arabian Language, Mehri; since 2008 this has involved collaborative work with Alex Bellem on the phonetics and phonology of emphatics in Mehri and Yemeni Arabic.

BELLEM, Alex
Council for British Research in the Levant, Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Alex Bellem is Research Fellow/Director (Syria) of the British Institute, Amman, and post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Salford. She is a theoretical and comparative phonologist who works on Semitic sound systems, particularly those of modern Arabic dialects.

A detective story: emphatics in Mehri

Until 1970, Ethio-Semitic was believed to be the only Semitic sub-family in which emphatic consonants were realised as ejectives. Since T.M. Johnstone's discoveries, however, ejectives have been recognised as a South Semitic feature, attested not only in Ethio-Semitic, but also in Modern South Arabian (MSAL). In this paper, we ask why it took so long to identify ejective emphatics in MSAL. Works based on fieldwork of the Viennese expedition in the early twentieth century (e.g. Jahn 1902, Müller 1909, Bittner 1909) and Bertram Thomas (Thomas 1937, Leslau 1947), describe emphasis in MSAL as similar to, but less salient than, emphasis in Arabic. Today there is no common consensus: in most works post-1970, the MSAL emphatics are described as generally post-glottalised (e.g. Johnstone 1987, Simeone-Senelle 1997). For some dialects of the languages, however, post-glottalisation is said to be increasingly restricted to a sub-set of the emphatics (Lonnet 2009).
Are researchers necessarily discussing different dialects, or could there be some other reason for the lack of consensus? In our detective work, we examine earlier descriptions of emphatics in Mehri. We then consider new phonetic and phonological evidence from a dialect of Mahriyôt (eastern Yemen), and take a short, but instructive, incursion into the sound system of San'ani Arabic.

References
Bittner, M. 1909. Studien zur Laut- und Formenlehre der Mehri-Sprache in Südarabien. I. Zum Nomen im engeren Sinn. Alfred Hölder: Wien.
Jahn, A. 1902. Südarabische Expedition. Band III. Die Mehri-Sprache in Südarabien. Alfred Hölder: Wien.
Johnstone, T.M. 1975a. 'Contrasting articulations in the Modern South Arabian languages', in J. & Th. Bynon (eds.), Hamito-Semitica: Proceedings of a colloquium held by the historical section of the Linguistics Association (Great Britain) at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, on the 18th, 19th and 20th March 1970. Mouton: The Hague.
Johnstone, T.M. 1975b. 'The Modern South Arabian languages', Afroasiatic Linguistics 1/5: 93-121.
Johnstone, T.M. 1987. Mehri lexicon and English-Mehri word-list. School of Oriental & African Studies: London.
Leslau, W. 1947. 'Four Modern South Arabian languages', Word 3: 180-203.
Lonnet, A. 2009. 'South Arabian, Modern', in K. Versteegh (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Brill: Leiden. Vol. 4: 297-300.
Müller, D.H. 1909. Südarabische Expedition. Band IX. Mehri- und ?a?rami-Texte gesammelt im Jahre 1902 in Gischin von Dr. Wilhelm Hein, bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Dav. Heinr. Müller. Alfred Hölder: Wien.
Simeone-Senelle, M-Cl. 1997. 'The Modern South Arabian languages', in R. Hetztron (ed.), The Semitic Languages. Routledge: London. 378-423.
Thomas, B. 1937. Four strange tongues from Central South Arabia - the Hadara group. Proceedings of the British Academy: London.

Ancient South Arabia
Chair: Michael Macdonald (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, UK)

10:20 - Saturday - July 25th

MULTHOFF, Anne
Lehrstuhl für Semitische Philologie und Islamwissenschaft, Jena, Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Born 1976. Studies in Semitistics, Islamic Sciences and Philosophy at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, 1996-2004. M.A. in Semitistics 2004. Research assistant at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, since 2006. Dissertation in Semitistics in prep.

How difficult it is to dedicate a statuette: A new approach to some Sabaic inscriptions from Mahrib

The Sabaic inscriptions from the city of Mahrib are currently under investigation in the framework of a research project supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Besides a complete catalogue of all texts known from the capital of Saba and its surroundings, the project aims at a critical re-interpretation of all known texts according to the present state of research. The immense progress in Ancient South Arabian epigraphy during the last years has led to some striking revisions in our understanding of several inscriptions, which will improve our knowledge of Sabaean culture. One of these aspects is the mode of dedication. Even though dedicatory inscriptions form a major part of the epigraphic material and must have been a common activity in the religious life of the town, finding the appropriate temple for a dedication and procuring an adequate object was not always easy, as the new reading of some inscriptions suggests. The paper will propose some new ideas for a number of difficult passages from dedicatory inscriptions from Mahrib.

Chair: Christian Robin (Collège de France, République Française)

10:45 - Saturday - July 25th

FRANTSOUZOFF, Serge A.
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg Branch, 18 Dvortsovaya embankment, 191186, St Petersburg, Russian Federation

Serge Frantsouzoff was born on October 13, 1963 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). In 1985 he graduated from the Oriental faculty of the Leningrad St. Petersburg University as a specialist in the history of Arab countries. In 1990 he supported his Ph.D. thesis on the history of Hadramawt in the early Middle Ages. His main fields of interest are the following: South Arabian epigraphy (especially the Hadramitic one), the history of Yemen in the Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, the Christian Orient (especially Christian Arabic and Ethiopic manuscripts).

Once more on the Interpretation of Mtl in Epigraphic South Arabian (a new expiatory inscription on irrigation from Kamna)

Last year in her contribution to the Seminar A. Multhoff tried to demonstrate that the term mtl in several contexts of Sabaic, Minaic (originated in Kamna) and Hadramitic inscriptions should be interpreted as 'similar'. However, an unpublished inscription from Kamna kept in the stores of the Military Museum at Sanaa under no. 148 proves that at least in the case of Minaic her conclusion was incorrect.
This expiatory text dated from the middle of the 1st millennium BC on the basis of palaeographic criteria was compiled by the previously unknown king of Kaminahû Dhamarkarib Riyâm, son of Ilîsami', and his commune (s2'b-s1) Kaminahû (ll. 1-3). One of the acts, of which they did penance to the god Dhû Madahwû (ll. 3-4: nthy|w-ntdr/k-D-Mdhww), is rendered as follows: w-b-hn/ygw/b-s1|wl/yt'd-s1/mtl 'and because they were laying on a wrong course for the stream which the document prescribes to use for irrigation' (ll. 6-7). Therefore in the final formula f-.hmy|n/bn/'rh/mtl-s1n (ll. 11-12) this term should have the same meaning: 'and may (they) be defended from the case (specified) in the document on them (i.e. on the cultivated lands designated as mwfr-n /l. 11/)'.

11:10-11:40 COFFEE

11:40 - Saturday - July 25th

STEIN, Peter
Lehrstuhl für Semitische Philologie und Islamwissenschaft, Jena, Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Born 1970. Apprenticeship and work as a tool maker 1987-1990. Studies in Assyriology, Semitistics and Theology at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, 1992-1998. Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1995-1996. M.A. in Assyriology 1998. Promotion (Ph.D) in Semitistics 2002. Research assistant at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, since 2002

Irrigation management in pre-Islamic South Arabia according to the epigraphic evidence

Irrigation as a particular feature of Ancient South Arabian culture is not only known from archaeological remains, but is also reflected in the contemporary epigraphic sources from the region. From these, we know a lot about irrigation devices such as dams, canals, sluices, and wells. On the one hand, from particular building texts, mainly from dedicatory inscriptions, we are informed of the importance of regular rainfall and resulting agricultural produce, as well as the disaster of drought. On the other hand, the actual management of irrigation, the question how the canal systems were supervised, how the water was allotted, and so on, have hardly been detected from epigraphic texts. Meanwhile, however, a number of inscriptions have appeared, most of them written on wooden sticks, which give detailed insights into the administrative procedure of water distribution in the oasis of Nashqum in the Wadi al-Jawf. The evidence will be presented in this paper.

12:05 - Saturday - July 25th

AGOSTINI, Alessio
Università degli Studi di Firenze, Firenze, Repubblica Italiana

Dr Alessio Agostini obtained his PhD degree in 2008 at the University of Florence with a study of South Arabian construction inscriptions. Since 2002 he is conducting fieldwork in Yemen (Tamna' and Baraqish) as member of the Italian Archaeological Mission directed by Prof. Alessandro de Maigret.

Building materials in South Arabian construction inscriptions

Among the specifications that are given in South Arabian construction inscriptions, one of the most interesting is the terminology, which identifies the materials used in building operations. We will present the most common vocabulary utilized for domestic, sacral and defensive architecture, in order to show which materials were involved and recorded in these texts.
The analysis of this lexical data within South Arabian documentation can reveal uniformity, but also on some cases linguistic differentiation depending on the area, chronology and monument concerned.
We will also try to demonstrate that an analysis of the terms, together with the archaeological records at our disposal, will reveal interesting nuances of semantic value, i.e distinguishing words indicating raw materials, combination of different materials and those representing finishing processes.
There are also cases in which a word, although common to all South Arabian, clearly identifies different materials in one or more dialects, because the vocabulary was adapted to the different natural resources available in a given area.

12:25 Poster Sesson

12:55-14:30 LUNCH

Ancient South Arabia (Contd.)
Chair: Ricardo Eichmann (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Germany)
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14:30 - Saturday - July 25th

BUCKLEY, Stephen
Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK

Dr. Stephen Buckley is an Honorary Research Associate in Bioarchaeology at the University of York. As part of the university's Mummy Research Group he has studied human remains from Egypt, Nubia, Italy, Ireland, South and Central America and is currently undertaking long-term research into the mummification practices of ancient Yemen.

WORTHINGTON, K. A.
Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK

Katherine Worthington has just completed an MChem degree in Chemistry at the University of York. For the past year she has worked as part of the university's Mummy Research Group looking into mummification practices of ancient Yemen, focusing on chemical analysis of the leather and textiles associated with the mummies.

FLETCHER, Joann
Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK

Dr. Joann Fletcher is an Honorary Research and Teaching Fellow at the University of York where she teaches Egyptian archaeology and mummification. As part of the university's Mummy Research Group she has studied human remains from Egypt, Italy, the Canary Islands, Ireland and South America and is undertaking long-term research into the burial practices of ancient Yemen.

PENKMAN, Kirsty
Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK

Dr Kirsty Penkman is a Lecturer in Analytical Chemistry and Biomolecular Archaeology. Her interest is in the application of analytical chemistry to archaeological and geological questions. A particular focus is the analysis of proteins: their pathways of degradation, their methods of preservation, and how these molecules can inform us.

BUCKLEY, Michael
BioArCh, Departments of Archaeology, Biology and Chemistry, University of York, York, UK/Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK

Dr. Mike Buckley is a Research Fellow and member of the University of York's BioArCh. His interest is in biomolecular methods for accurate species identification in archaeozoology. In particular, the use of proteomics and analytical biochemistry applied to bone and skin collagen for phylogenetic analyses of archaeological remains.

KOON, Hanna
Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK

Hannah Koon is a Wellcome Research Fellow developing tools to detect sub-clinical pathology in scorbutic bone. She completed her PhD in 2006 developing a new model of collagen deterioration.

Study of leather involved in Ancient Yemeni burial practices

Following preliminary work carried out to investigate mummification practices in ancient Yemen, which focused primarily on the embalming materials and textiles associated with the bodies (Buckley et al), this current study examines the leather encasing the bodies. It presents the results of the scientific analyses of leather samples taken from seven Yemeni mummies, dating from c. 1200 BC to 300 BC, with consideration for the possible symbolic and ritualistic significance of the results. Analytical techniques which have already proved to be successful on archaeological samples are being employed in this study, including Reverse Phase High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (RP-HPLC), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and proteomics-Mass Spectrometry (Humpula, Ostrom et al. 2007; Nielsen-Marsh, Richards et al. 2005 & Buckley, Collins & Thomas-Oates 2008). RP-HPLC showed that six of the seven archaeological leather samples had high concentrations of amino acids with expected collagen-like profiles, while the one exception appears to be completely mineralised. As a technique commonly used in the leather manufacturing industry to test different tanning agents, DSC is being used to assess the quality of tanning and state of preservation of the leather samples, with further analysis aimed at species identification of the leather being carried out using proteomics-MS.

References
Buckley, S., Fletcher, J., Al-Thour, K., Basalama, M. & Brothwell, D.R. 2007. 'A preliminary study on the materials employed in ancient Yemeni mummification and burial practices (summary)', Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 37: 37-41
Humpula, Ostrom et al. 2007. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 71:5956
Nielsen-Marsh, Richards et al. 2005. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102. 12:4409
Buckley, Collins & Thomas-Oates 2008. Anal. Biochem. 374: 325

14:55 - Saturday - July 25th

YULE, Paul
Seminar für Sprachen und Kulturen des Vorderen Orients, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Paul Yule completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg, where he currently teaches. His most important publications deal with the early metallurgy of South Asia as well as Arabia of the Late Pre-Islamic Age and early medieval period. He is a proven fund raiser with numerous successful projects. Corresponding Member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.

Fieldwork in Zafar, capital of Himyar (Yemen)

From 1998 to 2009, nine seasons of survey-mapping, museum cataloguing and excavation in and around Zafar have revealed considerable information about the Himyarite empire (c. 270-523 CE) and late/post (523-632 CE) periods, which comprise the temporal focus of our project. The subject of this presentation is the excavation results of the campaign that took place in February and March of 2009. The main object of study is the so-called Stone Building, which we began to investigate in 2004. This turns out to be a large (presently 18 m x 18 m) courtyard, which lies inside of what appears to be temple, to judge from the motifs in the reliefs. The campaign of 2007 cleared most of the northern end of the court and associated building. This season we propose to clear the rest of the adjacent features in the central portion. To date, this excavation has yielded several hundred relief fragments - more than other sites. Radiocarbon determinations suggest that these do not date as late as suspected, but rather largely in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. Palaeobotanic investigations are intended to shed light on the ancient environment, particularly its vegetation.

15:20 - Saturday - July 25th

LEWIS, Krista
Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA

Dr. Krista Lewis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Lewis is an archaeologist specializing in food and agriculture in prehistoric and early historic southwest Arabia and directs a long-term research project in the Dhamar region of highland Yemen.

KHALIDI, Lamya
University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Dr. Khalidi received her Ph.D at the University of Cambridge in 2006. Her dissertation focused on late prehistoric culture-contact along the Tihamah Red Sea coastal plain, Yemen. Besides her work with the Dhamar Survey Project in the Yemen highlands, she has directed four survey projects in Yemen, as well as a reconnaissance mission in Eritrea. Other current projects include the Franco-Italian Paleo-Y mission, Yemen, and excavations at the sites of Tell Hamoukar and Tell Brak, Syria. She was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of Louisville, KY during Spring term of 2009 and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d'Etude Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen Age (CEPAM-CNRS) in Valbonne, France.

ISENBERGER, Bill
Cartographer, Digital Mapping & Graphics, Springfield, Missouri, USA

William H. Isenberger, CEO of Digital Mapping and Graphics, Springfield, Missouri, specializes in archaeological cartography, GIS development and digital reconstructions. From the early 1980s, Isenberger has been involved in over 300 archaeological and historical projects, primarily in the United States and the Middle East with extensive experience in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

SANABANI, Ali
Director of the Museum of Archaeology in the Dhamar Province, Republic of Yemen

Mapping Ma'na'ah Maryan: Using GIS to reconstruct the development of a multi-period site in the Highlands of Yemen

The 2008 University of Arkansas at Little Rock Archaeological Project in Yemen's field season was dedicated to creating a detailed, three-dimensional map of the 40.4 hectare highland site of Ma'na'ah Maryn, occupied from the Neolithic to the Himyarite period. In addition to precise mapping of topography, buildings, streets, birkahs and other cultural features visible on the surface, we conducted a comprehensive assessment of the distribution of cultural artifacts across the site's surface. This work has also clarified Ma'na'ah Maryan's cultural chronology as it developed from a town with a focus on ceremonial space in the Bronze and Iron Ages to an urban defensive and trade outpost in the Himyarite period. The artifact densities and distributions systematically mapped out across the site reflect a number of processes that allow us to understand the use of space through time. We have identified evident access routes for local obsidian procurement and trade, specialized areas for iron working, drainage patterns, water management strategies, as well as areas currently heavily affected by and prone to erosion. This paper explains the mapping strategy developed at Maryan and presents the implications of the data for the spatial, socio-political and economic transformation of this site over several millennia.

15:40-16:10 TEA

16:10 - Saturday - July 25th

WOLF, Pawel
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin, Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin, Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Pawel Wolf (Dr-phil.) was born in 1958 in Moscow, Russia. He is a Sudan-archaeologist and Egyptologist; from 1992 has been conducting archaeological fieldwork projects in Sudan (Musawwarat al-Sufrah, Jabal Barkal, Meroë city, at the 4th Nile Cataract, etc.) and in Eritrea (Qohaito). At present he is directing excavations at Wuqro/Tigray (Almaqah temple) and Hamadab/Sudan (Meroitic settlement).

The Almaqah temple near Wuqro (Tigray, Ethiopia)

After the discovery of an inscribed and well preserved libation altar, a seated female statue (similar to the one from Adi Galamo), incense altars, and inscribed stone blocks by the Tigray Tourism & Culture Commission (TCC) in December 2007, an archaeological survey and excavations were started at the site by a newly founded Ethiopian-German Archaeological Project (TCC - German Archaeological Institute - F.-Schiller-University Jena).
Our preliminary excavations at the site of Mekaber Ga'ewa near Wuqro revealed early evidence of South-Arabian activity in Tigray - a single roomed temple with porticus, surrounded by a wide forecourt with subsidiary rooms. According to the inscribed altar objects, it was dedicated to the Sabaean god Almaqah. The altar and the inscribed objects, dating to the early first millennium BC, belong to its first building period and are still in situ at their original place within the temple's cella. Their Ethio-Sabaeann inscriptions mention a hitherto unknown king of D'm't, as well as for the first time the ancient name of Yeha. The survey revealed further ancient sites although not exactly dateable at the present state of research. The paper presents the excavation results, fieldwork activities until present, and gives a short idea of future research plans.

South Arabian Ethnography
Chair: Janet Starkey (Durham University, Durham, UK)

16:35 - Saturday - July 25th

AGIUS, Dionisius A.
MARES Project, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Professor Dionisius A. Agius is known for his work on Islamic material culture, maritime ethnography and Arabic language and linguistics. He has conducted ethnographical fieldwork among seafaring communities on the coasts of the Arabian peninsula and the African Red Sea coast, and is the author of several volumes on the subject. His present research is on the history of watercraft typology, nomenclature of parts of boats and maritime ethnography of the Red Sea.

COOPER, John
MARES Project, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Dr. John P. Cooper completed his doctoral thesis on the navigation and landscape of the medieval Egyptian Nile, investigating the medieval Nile network, sailing conditions and journey times, and the factors determining the location of major ports. His current research focuses on boat-building traditions in Yemen.

ZAZZARO, Chiara
MARES Project, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Dr Chiara Zazzaro's area of expertise is the maritime archaeology of the Red Sea and Horn of Africa, on which subject she wrote her PhD thesis at the University of Naples 'L'Orientale'. She has been involved in excavations at the Pharaonic harbour of Mersa Gawasis, Egypt, where she was field director in 2007-08. Her current research focus is the pre-Islamic Red Sea.

VAN RENSBURG, Julian Jansen
MARES Project, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Julian Jansen van Rensburg is a Ph.D. student investigating the maritime traditions of the island of Socotra. He has co-authored and published several articles related to fieldwork on the island and in Iran. He has worked for the Cambridge Archaeology Unit, and Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology, and on numerous overseas projects.

Wooden boatbuilding in Yemen: Arabia's last redoubt (The MARES Project)

The MARES Project team at Exeter University aims to study the maritime heritage of the Red Sea and the Arabian/Persian Gulf. For our first fieldwork excursion we chose Yemen's Gulf of Aden and Red Sea coasts as potentially rich areas of maritime tradition. Like Oman, Yemen is distinguished by unique boatbuilding practices, and is one of the last redoubts of wooden boatbuilding in the Arabian Peninsula. In the past 5-10 years, however construction of wooden boats has largely come to an end, to be replaced by fibreglass boats. Our fieldwork (February 2009) involved a preliminary survey of current and former boatbuilding centres in the region, including Aden, Khor al-Ghurayrah, al-Makha, al-Khukha, al-Hudaydah and al-Salif: the survey aimed to develop an understanding of the state-of-play of the wooden boatbuilding industry, and to understand local boat typology and construction, boatbuilding techniques, and timber types and sources. Boats in these areas were surveyed, and ethnographic interviews conducted with boat carpenters, mariners and fishermen. It became apparent from our survey that the wooden boatbuilding tradition is rapidly disappearing, and that both the material culture and human expertise and traditions surrounding the wooden boatbuilding tradition are dying out, and that there is an urgent need to recording and document this tradition before the data are lost. So far, our fieldwork has enabled us to establish a preliminary classification of dhow types, and deepened our understanding of the boat construction sequence, including a hitherto unknown process of keel-final construction. We have also developed an understanding of maintenance and decorative practices. Meanwhile, ethnographic interviews have deepened our understanding of navigational practices of local fishing people, and of the mariners who sailed these traditional dhows. A longer-term objective of the project is to examine coastal sites that on this visit were identified as potentially important ancient and medieval Islamic port sites.

17:00 - Saturday - July 25th

RODIONOV, Mikhail
Museum of Anthropology and Etrhnography, Russian Academy of Science, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

Mikhail A. Rodionov is a professor at the Oriental Department of the St. Petersburg State University and is head of the South and Southwest Asia Department at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of sciences. His interests include Arabian field ethnology, folk poetry and religion.

A Barf talisman from Ghayl Ba Wazir, Hadramawt

This paper addresses written and functional aspects of magic practices still in use in South Arabia. Based on new data collected during my 2008 year field season in Hadramawt, it provides a case-study of a talisman, the photocopy of which I made with the permission of 'Umar Ba Matraf, the custodian of the Cultural Centre in Ghayl Ba Wazir. The talisman belongs to the Barf category (literally a pebble) because the strongest magic texts have to be written on flat stones with a durable paint (e.g. either saffron or dragon's blood) in the belief that the integrity of letters and material guards the power of a talisman. The Barf under examination, however, was written on paper, according to modern practice. It was kept between two layers of leather in a dagger sheath of a Beduin 'Awa' b.Tifla (in this kind of talismans only maternal names matter). When compared with the manuscripts on magic from the Institute of Oriental manuscripts of St. Petersburg, the Barf's text seems to have been styled in conformity with Shams al-makarif by Ahmad b. Kali al-Buni (died 622 /1225). Local people agree that tradition of written talismans (al-katba), both malevolent and benevolent, is in force in the Ghayl and elsewhere with its rich variety of cultural and functional features.

17:25 - Closing Remarks

POSTERS

To download all the Poster Abstracts in Acrobat pdf format Click here


POSTER

AL-MAHROUQI, Ali (Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Sultanate of Oman)

Ali al-Mahrouqi is a graduate from the Department of Archaeology, Sultan Qaboos University. He is an MA student in History Department of the same university. Currently, he works as an archaeologist in the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Sultanate of Oman, where he is engaged in a documentation project about Omani historical buildings.

Documentation of Old Township (harat) in the Sultanate of Oman

This research aims to study the old Omani harat (quarters). These harat (sing. harah) represent significant elements of the architectural heritage of the country. The Ministry of Heritage and Culture has been striving to maintain these harat in different regions of the Sultanate. In order to conduct the project successfully, and in my capacity as the rapporteur of the ‘Historical Buildings Protection and Registration Committee’ established by the Ministry, l suggested conducting a comprehensive documentation for these harat. Two phases were planned.
The first phase, which started in 2008, included a survey of all harat in the Sultanate. A documentation form was designed for this purpose and was distributed to local people through town governors and municipal offices. After preparing the lists of harat, selected sites were visited and a map of the distribution of harat was produced.

AL-NA’IMI, Khudooma Said (Hafit, Buraimi, Sultanate of Oman)

Khudooma al-Na’imi is interested in using the technique of forensic science in physical anthropology and archaeology. He received his MSc in forensic anthropology from the University of Central Lancashire (UK) in 2008 and worked in forensic laboratory in the Abu Dhabi Police for seven years. He obtained his first degree in Biology from the UAE University.

Estimation of body height of old Omani aflaj builders from hands impressions on sarooj disks

Body height (stature) is an important health, genetic, nutrition, culture and forensic indicator. Yet, there is little knowledge of the stature of old people who build the complicated aflaj (sing. falaj) systems (water canals) in Oman. Studying the hand impressions for those people on sarooj can help filling this gap in anthropometric studies. Sarooj, a traditional Omani mortar, was used in aflaj construction. The samples of hand impressions on sarooj were measured in the village of Khutwah, located in Muhada in the Sultanate of Oman. The samples included seven disks and their date was estimated to be in the Islamic period. Stature was calculated using hand breadth (HB). As gender was unknown the data were used in estimating male and female stature. Hand impression breadth was found to be 7.677 ± 0.4 cm (3 ± 0.2 in) (mean ± SD). The estimated stature was found to be 163.567 ± 5.60 cm (64.4 ± 2.2 in) (mean ±SD) for male and 157.454 ± 4.50 cm (62 ± 1.8 in) (mean ± SD) for female. Sarooj hand impressions were a useful estimation stature in this former population of Oman. The problematic aspects of this method will be discussed.

AL REYES, Abdulla (Director General, National Center for Documentation & Research, Ministry of Presidential Affairs, PO Box 5884, Abu Dhabi, UAE)

Dr Abdulla Al Reyes is Director-General of the National Center for Documentation and Research in Abu Dhabi.

The National Center for Documentation and Research (NCDR) - ‘Memory of the Nation’

Established in Abu Dhabi in 1968 under the directives of late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Ruler of Abu Dhabi and the first President of the UAE, the National Center for Documentation and Research (NCDR) is a premier archival and research institution in the Middle East. The NCDR’s vision is to provide distinctive archival, documentation and research services that foster in-depth understanding and appreciation of the rich history of the UAE and the Arabian Peninsula. By carrying out its mission of preserving the documentary heritage of the region, and as a trusted source of information for decision makers and the public, the NCDR enhances civic spirit and national identity.
Over a period of four decades, the NCDR has collected historical documents related to the UAE and the Arabian Gulf region from archival repositories around the world. These records come in a variety of formats such as microfilms, manuscripts, books, rare maps, photographs and audio-visual materials which are restored and preserved using latest technology. The foreign records are complimented by the corpus of indigenous ‘oral history’ resources of a bygone era.
As the trusted custodian of the UAE Government records, the NCDR stands today as a national institution equipped with a vast library and excellent digital and print resources. Its state-of-the-art facilities include a high-tech 700-person auditorium, a 97-person 3-D theatre which takes visitors on a special voyage through the UAE’s history; an in-house printing facility; and an exhibition featuring interesting displays related to the nation’s history and heritage. Its public outreach programmes include rendering knowledge services, publishing scholarly books, hosting and participating in regional and international conferences, and membership in leading international archival and research centres. The NCDR takes the lead in transforming UAE’s history of yesterday and today into tomorrow’s permanent record and represents the ‘Memory of the Nation’.

BERGER, Ora (Israel)

Ora Berger obtained her PhD in Art History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2007. Her PhD dissertation, ‘The Jewellery of the Jewish bride in San?a’ as a cultural and artistic message - the eighteenth century’, licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0. can be downloaded from www.oraberger.co.il. The synopsis is in English (1–29) and the dissertation is in Hebrew (30–348). Her focus is on Jewish art in Yemen and its relationships with the arts in Yemen, especially with Islamic Art.

Fishes (Huti)

Hebrew Illuminated Bibles from Yemen are famous, but hardly researched. The focus is on fishes in two ‘carpet pages’ from a Hebrew Illuminated Bible (Sanaa, 1469). The poster aims to show that the art model is a pair of swimming fishoriginating in Yemen under the Rasulid sultans of Yemen (r. 1229–1454), ruling from Ta’izz. To prove this assumption, the twelve pairs of micrography* fishes are compared with the Rasulid pair of swimming fishes on a brass tray made for the Rasulid sultan of Yemen Muayyad Dawud (r.1296–1321) and two coins from Aden. As far as is known, such juxtaposition was never done before and the similarity shows the connection. Why fishes? Fishes are Jewish iconography with the meaning of fertility and protection, following Jacob’s blessing (Genesis 48:17). The Jewish Talmud explains that in Jewish belief the evil eye cannot penetrate water, and therefore water shields and protects fish against it.
The art formula of a pair of swimming fish, one swimming right and the other swimming left, was the brand of Aden in the Rasulid coinage. As Rasulid money was struck in south Yemen and circulated in Yemen, this brand spread quickly and easily with no limitation of religion.
By reusing this art formula in different artistic configuration (large scale, multiplying the pair of swimming fishes twelve times, micrography and redesigning the new twelve pairs of swimming fishes as the central composition of two juxtaposing ‘carpet pages’ in a big Hebrew Illuminated Bible), the Jewish Scribe made a clear statement. He switched, what was once the official Rasulid brand of Aden, to a Jewish brand. By so doing, he burnt in the collective mind of the Jewish community the idea of being protected and blessed following Jacob’s blessing. This is the power of a brand: to promote with visual means an idea that had been fixed in the mind. Though the term ‘brand’ is modern, its use in art is antique.
________________
* Micrography is a Jewish unique and exclusive style. It is defined as the minute Hebrew Biblical text used by the Scribe to create the contour of a form in Hebrew Illuminated Bible manuscripts. In our case, twelve pairs of swimming fishes.


BERGER, Ora (Israel) - Sanaa and Aden: Arabic Writing in ‘carpet pages’ of Hebrew Illuminated Bibles

The phenomena of Arabic writing in ‘carpet pages’ of Hebrew Illuminated Bibles in Yemen has never been researched. I wish to point on that phenomena and to try to understand its origin.
Three examples are known to date. The two from Sanaa, dated to 1469 and 1475, show the name of the donor in big, bold coloured Arabic writing in the horizontal zones of the pages. The other example is probably from Aden from the 13th century or earlier. To the best of my knowledge, this example has not yet been researched. Here, the Arabic writing, or, pseudo-Arabic writing, appears in the frame and surrounds the Hebrew writing. The ‘Arabic writing’ here might be for beauty only, as it is hard to read. This is a unique and rare juxtaposition of Hebrew and Arabic writing in the context of a ‘carpet page’ in a Hebrew Illuminated Bible in Yemen.
What is the origin of the Arabic writing in ‘carpet pages’ of Hebrew Illuminated Bibles in Yemen? Is it a Jewish source, or Arabic? Did it originated in Yemen, or outside Yemen? Why in ‘carpet pages’ of Hebrew Illuminated Bibles? What can we conclude from it about the relationship between Arabic writing and Hebrew writing in Yemen? I hope the poster will help to shed light on this unique phenomena.

BELFIORETTI, Luca (Jewel of Muscat Project, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Muscat, PO Box 252, PC 100, Sultanate of Oman)

Luca Belfioretti is an archaeologist and graduated from University of Bologna in Italy. His thesis addressed the reconstruction of a third-millennium BCE reed boat in the Western Indian Ocean. He has worked in Oman periodically from 2000/01, first with the University of Bologna and later for the Ministry of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate of Oman. He presently resides in Oman, and is employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a site manager on the Jewel of Muscat Project, a reconstruction of a ninth-century CE sewn-plank ship.

VOSMER, Tom (Maritime Archaeology Consultant, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Muscat, PO Box 252, PC 100, Sultanate of Oman)

Dr Tom Vosmer is a maritime archaeologist specialising in watercraft of the western Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf. He is resident in Oman, working as a consultant to the government on maritime heritage, culture and archaeology. Currently he is employed as project director (construction) on the Jewel of Muscat Project, the reconstruction of an early ninth-century sewn-plank boat that will sail to Singapore in early 2010.

Jawharat Muscat Project

The Sultanate of Oman has a long maritime history with early navigators, seamen and traders sailing the world’s oceans. At the heart of Oman’s unique maritime heritage lay the expertise of local craftsmen who constructed traditional vessels that would carry precious cargoes across the vast oceans to distant lands.
The Jawharat Muscat Project is an ambitious initiative to recreate an early ninth-century sewn plank boat of the type that traded between Oman and China more than 1,000 years ago. The reconstruction is based on a shipwreck, the only one of its kind ever discovered, which was excavated in 1998 and clearly showed, from its construction, that it was built by Western Indian Ocean shipwrights, possibly in Oman. When it sank, the ship was returning from China to the Middle East with a cargo of over 60,000 pieces of Tang Dynasty ceramics, bronze mirrors, spices, gold and silver vessels, as well as ten tons of lead. Every aspect of construction of the Jawharat Muscat is comprehensively documented: research and design, experimentation, construction, navigation and sailing.

BOEHME, Manfred (Bat Research & Restoration Project, Department of Excavation & Archaeological Studies, Ministry of Heritage & Culture, P.O. Box 668, Muscat 113, Sultanate of Oman)

Manfred Böhme studied pre- and protohistory at the University of Muenster, Germany. He has been involved in the archaeology of the Bat site from 2004 and has led the restoration workshop from 2006.

Wadi al-'Ayn: First investigations at Qubur Juhal, Oman

The ‘beehive tombs’ from al-'Ayn are a well known part of a UNESCO World Heritage Monument site in Oman. Despite the popularity of the tombs, detailed records are rare. The ‘Bat Research & Restoration Project’ has now started with the documentation as preparatory work for urgent preservation treatment. This preliminary report describes helpful indications concerning a chronological order within this assemblage of tombs.

BREEZE, Paul (VISTA, The Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK)

Paul Breeze works with HP VISTA at the University of Birmingham. His work and research interests are largely focused upon the characterisation of archaeological landscapes through remote sensing and geophysics, and the application of GIS to archaeology, with further interests in global prehistory.

Cultural Mapping and Signature Landscape Characterisation in Qatar using Remote Sensing

The potential for large-scale cultural prospection across Qatar using remotely sensed datasets is currently being examined as part of collaborative project between the Qatar Museums Authority and University of Birmingham. Two study zones, constituting 20% of the total landmass of Qatar are designed to cross a wide variety of anthropogenic and natural landscape types to assess the effectiveness of different types of remotely sensed data in the varying environments of Qatar.
Among the datasets under investigation are high-resolution remotely sensed IKONOS (2003) and Aerial Orthophoto data (2004) which are showing a high potential for the identification of cultural archaeological sites within the study areas. This effectiveness is due in part to the absence of the large sand seas that cover many other parts of Arabia, with aeolian deposits from the northwest that would normally cover Qatar, being deposited in the Gulf of Salwah. Additionally, the absence of extensive soil coverage and a good state of cultural preservation enhances the effectiveness of these data.
Survey work is ongoing, however a wealth of information has already been revealed, including former settlements (of varying morphologies and size), the remains of Ottoman-period forts known to fringe the northern coast, former enclosures, and clusters of cairns. In addition extensive networks of large stone-built intertidal fish-traps, have been identified along vast swathes of the coast. Some of the fish-traps are unusual as they are located far from the coast, and a comparison of data from different acquisition dates (GAMBIT etc) provides information about sedimentation regimes within these areas.
This survey is beginning to highlight the large volume of cultural remains present within Qatar, and (in addition to other on-going work) to populate the new QNHER and contribute to the preservation and investigation of Qatar’s unique cultural heritage.

GIRAUD, Jessica (Postdoctoral researcher at Institut Culturel Avataq, Montréal and UMR 7041, ArScan, team « Village à l’état au Proche et Moyen-Orient », Nanterre, République Française)

AL-MAHROOQI, Ali (Researcher at Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman)

GERNEZ, Guillaume (Researcher at IFPO, CNRS, UNIFR 6-USR 3135, Beirut, Lebanese Republic)

RIGHETTI, Sabrina (PhD candidate at University of Paris 1, République Française)

PORTAT, Emilie (Anthropologist at the city of Chartres, PhD candidate at University of Paris1, République Française)

SEVIN-ALLOUET, Christophe (PhD candidate at University of Paris1, République Française)

LEMÉE, Marion (Archaeologist at INRAP, République Française)

CLEUZIOU, Serge (Professor of University Paris 1 and UMR 7041, ArScan, team « Village à l’état au Proche et Moyen-Orient », Nanterre, République Française)

First three campaigns of survey to Adam from 2007 to 2009

After the discovery of an engraved stone in 2006 near Adam, dated by Professor Serge Cleuziou to the third millennium BC, the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Sultanate of Oman, instigated an archaeological study of the region of Adam, nowadays the last oasis in the north of the deserts Umm al-Samim and the Rub al-Khali. For centuries, this area has been the last shelter before entering the desert, being the last oasis and the last crossroad at the same time. During the first three campaigns led by French team from 2007 to 2009, this area has revealed a high archaeological potential with 1155 structures already found. Those sites can be dated from the Early Bronze Age to the Islamic period. Among the main results are the discoveries of a large Hafit necropolis at Jabal Qara, Bronze Age graves and possible settlements near Adam, three small Iron Age graveyards near Jabal Hamra Kaif and two pits undated pits containing camel skeletons.

IBRAHIM, Moawiyah M. (Representative of Jordan to the World Heritage Committee & President, the Society of Friends of Archaeology & Heritage, P.O.Box 815584, 11180 Jabal Amman, Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan)

Moawiyah M. Ibrahim, President for the Friends of Archaeology and Heritage Society, Jordan, representative for the World Heritage Center, former founder Director of the institution for Archaeology and Anthropology at Yarmouk University 1984–1992, Jordan. Founder Director of the Department of Archaeology, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. Field researches at numerous sites in Jordan (Sahab, Dayr Allah, Zeiraqoun and Jordan Valley), Bahrain (Sar), Kuwait (‘Akaz), Yemen (Wadi Beihan [Baihan], Ma’rib), and Oman (Wadi al-Safafir, Wadi Bani Karus, al-Balid, Manal, and Nizwa). Published several books, and over than 150 articles.

Arabic Epigraphy and Writing Materials in Oman

The poster will explore the history of Arabic writing and writing materials in Oman. The first signs in the Arabian Gulf to be identified as writing were observed on small stamp seals excavated at Ra’s al-Jinz in the eastern region of the Sultanate of Oman. These signs were dated by the excavators to the second half of the third millennium BC. Other inscriptions (nearly of the same period) from the same site were inscribed on jars and stamp seals imported from the Indus Valley.
Hesaic inscriptions from the Arabian Gulf have been found at al-Dor, Thaj and other Gulf regions. South Arabic inscriptions of the first century AD were restricted to Khawr Ruri in Dhofar. Other pre-Islamic inscriptions, also found in Dhofar, have been recorded on rocks and inside caves. A small number of Greek and Latin inscriptions have been found at sites on the Oman peninsula.
Arabic inscriptions and grafitti are found on rocks, tombstones, mosques, wooden doors and ceilings, pottery and plastered walls. Other inscriptions are found on household items, coins, silver jewellery and other metals. Monumental inscriptions are mainly found in mosques and Dhofari tomb inscriptions, while other tomb inscriptions were found on simple upright stones and pottery sherds. Inscriptions on wood are found on doors, ceilings, boats and other objects. Silver jewellery and amulets are frequently inscribed with Qur’anic verses, proverbs and ada’i. Many 19th- and 20th-century examples have been found in various regions of Oman and other parts of Arabia. Some examples may date from earlier periods, although it was common to smelt older pieces to produce new ones.
Tomb inscriptions were prohibited by the ’Iba?i confession. This practice was also followed by the Sunni population. Exceptions were occasionally made for deceased imams, theologians and scholars. In some limited areas tomb inscriptions were tolerated for other individuals including influential women. I have investigated tomb inscriptions in ’Ibadi regions including Nizwa, Wadi al-Haymala and Wadi Bani Kharous.
Coins were minted in Oman as early as the Umayyad period of the first century AH and continued to be struck in this region bearing the name Oman during the following centuries. Writing was practiced on stones and camel shoulder bones for several centuries, while others practiced writing on rock outcrops, and this continued into the second half of the twentieth century. Teaching in mosques and outside, under the trees, was common.

ISENBERGER, Bill (Cartographer, Digital Mapping & Graphics, Springfield, Missouri, USA)

William H. Isenberger, CEO of Digital Mapping and Graphics, Springfield, Missouri, specializes in archaeological cartography, GIS development and digital reconstructions. Since the early 1980s, Isenberger has been involved in over 300 archaeological and historical projects, primarily in the United States and the Middle East with extensive experience in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The west wall of the Peristyle Hall, Awam Temple (Mahram Bilqis)

This poster presents a modelling project of the west wall of the Peristyle Hall of the Awam Temple, created with the new PhotoModeler Scanner software using Dense Surface Modeling (DSM). The wall is 19 m long and 2.8 m high. The photos used for the PhotoModeler Scanner project were taken using a Canon Digital Rebel with a 20 mm lens in the spring of 2006. Some of the targets used for photo referencing were shot in with a reflector-less total station to provide control points to reference the PhotoModeler project to the site coordinate system. The final images were rendered in 3D Studio Max.

PARTON, Ash (Department of Anthropology and Geography, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK)

Current research involves developing a framework of late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental changes within southeast Arabia, based upon a series of fluvial and lacustrine deposits, as part of his doctoral thesis. Interests include how landscape and climatic changes are reflected within the physical, geochemical and isotopic record, and how such palaeoenvironmental variability may be related to changes within the archaeological record.

PARKER, Adrian (Department of Anthropology and Geography, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK)

Adrian Parker’s current research interests involve the prehistory of the Middle East and southern England (especially Neolithic and Bronze Age), Quaternary Science, Geoarchaeology/Geomorphology, Environmental Archaeology/palaeoecology. Application of multi proxy techniques e.g. phytoliths, pollen, geochemistry.

FARRANT, Andrew (British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, UK)

Andrew Farrant is a senior geologist within the British Geological Survey and is currently leading an extensive, long-term mapping project of the UAE. He is also involved in an ongoing study to identify and constrain a series of pluvial phases within Arabia between 250,000 and 80,000 years ago.

LENG, Melanie (NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, UK)

Melanie Leng is a senior research scientist within NIGL, Chair of Isotope Geoscience at the University of Nottingham, and Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester. She primarily manages palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironmental research.

UERPMANN, Hans-Peter (Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, University of Tübingen, Bundesrepublik Deutschland)

Hans-Peter Uerpmann has been working in south-east Arabia from the 1980s, mainly in regard to the Neolithic period, but also extending to the Palaeolithic and Metal Ages with regard to environmental history and Archaeozoology. Fieldwork has concentrated on the Emirate of Sharjah during the last decade in close cooperation with the local Directorate of Antiquities.

SCHWENNINGER, Jean-Luc (Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK)

Jean-Luc Schwenninger is a member of the Luminescence Dating and Research Group within the Research Laboratories for Archaeology and the History of Art, in Oxford. He is currently involved in a wide variety of luminescence dating projects, including an ongoing study to identify and constrain a series of pluvial phases within Arabia between 250,000 and 80,000 years ago.

GALLETTI, Chris (Department of Anthropology and Geography, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK)

Christopher Galletti is a graduate research student at Oxford Brookes University. His research interests include remote sensing, GIS, human ecology, palaeoenvironments, and human origins. He is currently conducting research on prehistoric sites in Dhofar, Oman.

WELLS, Jon (Department of Anthropology and Geography, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK)

Jon Wells is a senior laboratory technician at Oxford Brookes University who specialises in the preparation and analysis of thin section sediments for micromorphology. He is currently involved in a number of geoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental research projects in south-eastern Arabia.

Evidence for an early MIS3 wet phase from within Southeast Arabia

Southeast Arabia is uniquely positioned with respect to both palaeoclimate and archaeological studies. Whilst its role in the migration and dispersal of early modern humans continues to generate debate, its location at the critical interface between two of the world’s major climate systems; the Indian Ocean Monsoon (IOM) and the mid-latitude westerlies (MLW), has prompted a wide variety of palaeoclimatic studies to be conducted. A continually expanding body of work now indicates that Arabia has experienced significant climatic and environmental changes since the last interglacial around 135–120,000 years before present (BP), largely as a result of Indian Ocean Monsoon (IOM) variability, however the timing of such changes remain unresolved. In particular, the occurrence of a pluvial phase during Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3) continues to generate debate, with a variety of records often providing conflicting evidence as to its timing. To address this issue, we present a high-resolution multi-proxy terrestrial record of an early MIS3 wet phase within the Arabian interior at approximately 56,000 years BP. Geomorphological evidence indicates that during this period, the northward migration and incursion of the IOM into Arabia caused large-scale alluvial fan and wadi networks to become active, issuing from the Hajar mountains towards the Gulf. Of these, a large alluvial fan and its associated drainage network became heavily constrained around the Jabal Faya anticline, causing significant ponding of surface water, which subsequently formed a large overbank palaeolake deposit. Isotopic, geochemical and bulk physical evidence are also presented which provide important information regarding hydrological and catchment stability processes during this period. The evidence presented here therefore not only provides important information regarding the timing and intensity of low latitude climatic excursions, but also provides substantial support for the ability of Arabia to support autochthonous human occupation and development during the Late Pleistocene.

PHILLIPS, Carl (CNRS UMR 7041, Maison René Ginouvès de l’archéologie et de L’Ethnologie, 21 allée de l’Université, 92023 Nanterre cedex, France)

Carl Phillips is an associate researcher with CNRS UMR 7041 and has been responsible for a number of archaeological projects in the UAE, Oman and Yemen.

DE PROCÉS, Solène Marion (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, République Française)

Solène Marion de Procés recently completed a dissertation on the Farasan Islands and is now working on her PhD at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

South Arabian inscriptions from the Farasan Islands (Saudi Arabia).

A few years ago the study of a Latin inscription found on Farasan Island was published in the Proceedings of the Society for Arabian Studies (Phillips, Villeneuve & Facey 2004: 239–250 ). Prior to this, the only inscription known from Farasan was a fragmentary South Arabian inscription published in the journal Atlal (Zarins et al 1981: 9–42). As a result of further surveys of the island (Nehmé & Villeneuve n.d,), several more South Arabian inscriptions have now been recorded. All of the inscriptions are very short, or incomplete, and often heavily eroded. The legible inscriptions appear to comprise mainly personal names. The inscriptions and proposed readings will be presented along with a description of the sites where they were found (where such evidence is available). The possible dates for the inscriptions will also be considered alongside supporting archaeological evidence. Finally, the evidence that the inscriptions provide for South Arabians on Farasan will be discussed in relation to historical developments on the adjacent mainland and southern Red Sea coast from the early first millennium BC to the first few centuries AD.

RIGHETTI, Sabrina (Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Maison de l’Archéologie et de l’Ethnologie, 21, allée de l’Université, 92023, Nanterre cedex, France)

Sabrina Righetti is a PhD student at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research concerns the Wadi Suq period and Late Bronze Age (2000–1300 BC) in the Oman peninsula. She is involved in a survey project in the region of Adam, Sultanate of Oman.

CLEUZIOU, Serge (CNRS, UMR 7041, Equipe du village à l’État au Proche et Moyen-Orient, 21, allée de l’Université, F-92023, Nanterre cedex, France)

Serge Cleuziou is Professor of Oriental Archaeology at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. From 1977 to 1984 he excavated Early Bronze Age remains of settlements and graves at Hili (UAE). He also directed survey in Yemen (1986–1993). From 1985, he has been co-directing, with Prof. M. Tosi, the Joint Hadd Project in the Ja’alan (Oman).

The Wadi Suq potter : typological study of the pottery assemblage at Hili 8 (UAE)

At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, a new set of pottery appears in the Oman peninsula, reflecting a new society: the Wadi Suq culture. Hili 8 was the first settlement site discovered for this period and was excavated by a French team under the direction of Serge Cleuziou from 1977 to 1984. This poster is the result of work carried out on the archives of Hili 8 excavations. Its aim is to show a typological study of the pottery assemblage coming from the period III levels, which will be fully published for the first time. An inter-site study linking typology, fabric and surface treatment has been made to compare Hili 8 pottery to contemporary sites, in order to define the settlement pottery characteristics and to establish if the pottery assemblage is common to all the area or if some regionalization comes out and to determine the place of production.

WATSON, Janet C.E. (School of Languages, University of Salford, Salford, UK)

Janet Watson is Professor of Arabic Linguistics at the University of Salford. She has published widely on Yemeni Arabic dialects, and on the phonology and morphology of modern Arabic dialects. She has recently begun to conduct research on the Modern South Arabian Language, Mehri; from 2008 this has involved collaborative work with Alex Bellem on the phonetics and phonology of emphatics in Mehri and Yemeni Arabic.

BELLEM, Alex (British Institute, PO Box 519, Jubaiha, Amman 11941, Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan)

Alex Bellem is Research Fellow/Director (Syria) for the British Institute, Amman, and post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Salford. She is a theoretical and comparative phonologist who works on Semitic sound systems, particularly the sound systems of modern Arabic dialects.

The changing role of Semitic emphatics? Evidence from Arabic and beyond

Emphatics across the Semitic languages today are typically classified either as ejectives (as in Ethio-Semitic languages), ‘backed’ (as in most Arabic dialects), or somewhere between these two types of realisation (as in some Neo-Aramaic dialects, or various Modern South Arabian languages).
Where emphatics are purely ejectives, ‘emphatic’ is clearly involved in a three-way laryngeal contrast (voiced–ejective–voiceless), and with respect to obstruents a series of such triadic oppositions may be set up. In Arabic, by contrast, where emphatics are predominantly of the ‘backed’ variety, they are generally assumed to function as part of a diadic ‘backed’–’non-backed’ contrast. There is little discussion in the literature, however, of how the Arabic dialects themselves also provide evidence for the changing role of emphatics within Semitic sound systems.
In this paper, we show that in some dialects of Arabic, ‘emphatic’ consonants still enter into a basically three-way voiced–emphatic–voiceless opposition, while in others they do not. We summarise our acoustic evidence from various types of Arabic dialects as well as Ethio-Semitic, demonstrating the triadic vs dyadic systems as follows:

a.. Triadic system (as in Iraqi and San‘ani Arabic, Tigrinya, among others)

b. Diadic system (as in Cairene and Damascene Arabic, among others)


Such evidence not only contributes to Arabic dialectal sound-system typology, but also lends weight to the hypothesis that the early (Common) Semitic emphatics were ejectives. The data may also force us to question the category of voicing in Semitic.

References

Bellem, Alex. 2007. Towards a Comparative Typology of Emphatics: Across Semitic and into Arabic Dialect Phonology. Unpublished PhD dissertation, SOAS, University of London.

Dolgopolsky, Aharon B. 1977. Emphatic Consonants in Semitic. Israel Oriental Studies 7.

Watson, Janet C.E. (in press). Introduction, In Mehri-Texte aus der jemenitischen Šarqiyah, transkribiert unter Mitwirkung von 'Askari Hugayran Sa'd A. Sima (edited, annotated and introduced by Janet C.E. Watson & W. Arnold). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Watson, Janet C.E. & Alex Bellem (forthc.). Glottalisation and Neutralisation in Yemeni Arabic and Mehri. In B. Heselwood & Z. Hassan (eds). Instrumental Studies in Arabic Phonetics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

YULE, Paul (Seminar für Sprachen und Kulturen des Vorderen Orients, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Bundesrepublik Deutschland)

Paul Yule completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg, where he currently teaches. His most important publications deal with Arabia of the late pre-Islamic period as well as the early metallurgy of South Asia. He is a successful fund raiser with numerous projects seen to completion. Corresponding Member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.

Relative Chronology of the Stone Building at Zafar, Capital of the Himyarite Confederation

Relative Chronology of the Stone Building at Zafar, Capital of the Himyarite Confederation
The Stone Building at Zafar spans over 500 years of history. It is best explained neither as a palace nor a villa, but rather as a temple. Archaeologists attempt to order the structure and its debris into a relative historical
1 See Dolgopolsky’s (1977) trajectory of emphatic development, as per various Neo-Aramaic dialects.
2 See in particular the discussion in Watson (in press) and Watson & Bellem (forthc.). sequence of events. Fragmentary walls made of black habash stones appear to predate the main structure, which seems to have arisen as a single event. To judge from three 14C dates in a levelling course below the pavement, this happened at around the time of Christ. During perhaps the later 5th century CE nearly life-size figures were set into the interior courtyard wall. Scanty evidence at ?afar suggests its destruction or desertion during the mid 6th century.
14C datings help to date the debris from the courtyard. This predates the latest architectural finds (the crowned figure relief) by some 200 years. How is this possible? The charcoal which accumulated in the court derives evidently from the refurbished (not original) wooden roof and furniture inside the structure.
This explains why the wooden debris predates also the pottery, which dates to the 5th - 6th century – immediately after the reliefs. In the 6m thick debris there is no clear stratigraphy and it has been churned up. Even the very late debris, the slaggy ashy deposit (task 400~025), shows the same 14C dates as the debris from the floor and upper debris. Squatter settlement remains came to light.

ZAID, Zaydoon (American Foundation for the Study of Man, Falls Church, Virginia, USA)

Awam Temple (Mahram Bilqis)

The latest excavations by the American Foundation for the Study of Man have revealed one of the most significant temple complexes in ancient South Arabia, the Awam temple, located near the ancient city of Ma’rib, about 160 km to the east of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The main concern of the poster is the presentation of the architectural layout of the Temple Complex. The poster seeks to discuss and to present the changes and alterations applied to the architectural layout during the different occupational phases of the Awam temple.

© Seminar for Arabian Studies 2009.

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