This book provides a comprehensive and detailed review of the evidence for Early Bronze Age mortuary rituals on the Oman Peninsula, describing the research conducted, synthesizing the resulting data, and presenting a complete view of the state of knowledge on the topic.

This volume brings together expert s in archaeology and bioarchaeology to examine continuity and change in ancient Arabian mortuary practices. While most previous investigations have been limited geographically to Egypt and the Levant, this volume focuses on the lesser-studied southeastern Arabian Peninsula, showing what death and burial can reveal about the lifestyles of the region’s prehistoric communities. In case studies from Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain, contributors explore the transition from the earliest to the most complex mortuary monuments in the Bronze Age and beyond. They consider sociopolitical and environmental factors that may have influenced mortuary practices and what skeletal biogeochemistry can reveal about changing mobility and access to food resources. They also discuss sites that illustrate more nuanced shifts in burial traditions that took place during the evolution of the Hafit to the Umm an-Nar cultures, a period of transformation often neglected because the semi-nomadic lifestyle of this intermediary culture left behind a limited archaeological record. Burial patterns reveal a shift from cairns to communal tombs that offers new insight into the relationship between the mortuary landscape and the living, while the presence of animal bones interred with human remains embodies the significance of herd management as symbols of both territoriality and reproduction. By using skeletal remains as a rich source of scientific data that complements studies of burial context, this volume represents an important turning point for mortuary research in the region. Its novel interdisciplinary and international perspective provides a synthesis of new ideas and interpretations that will guide future archaeological research in Arabia and beyond. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen Contributors: Eugenio Bortolini | Charlotte Marie Cable | Guillaume Gernez | Jessica Giraud | Richard Thorburn Howard Cuttler | Aurea Izquierdo Zamora | Olivia Munoz | Jill A. Weber | Benjamin W. Porter | Alexis Boutin | Debra L. Martin | Kathryn M. Baustian | Anna J. Osterholz | Peter Magee

This volume represents the proceedings of the conference entitled Death, Burial and the Transition to the Afterlife in Arabia and Adjacent Regions that was held at the British Museum from November 27th to 29th, 2008. Contents: Introduction to the contributions on burial archaeology (Lloyd Weeks); 1) Remarks on Neolithic burial customs in south-east Arabia (Adelina U. Kutterer); 2) Ornamental objects as a source of information on Neolithic burial practices at al-Buhais 18, UAE and neighbouring sites (Roland de Beauclair); 3) On Neolithic funerary practices: were there necrophobic manipulations in 5th-4th millennium BC Arabia? (Vincent Charpentier and Sophie Mery) ; 4) The burials of the middle Holocene settlement of KHB-1 (Ras al-Khabbah, Sultanate of Oman) (Olivia Munoz, Simona Scaruffi and Fabio Cavulli); 5) Results, limits and potential: burial practices and Early Bronze Age societies in the Oman Peninsula (S. Mery); 6) Life and Death in an Early Bronze Age community from Hili, Al Ain, UAE (Kathleen McSweeney, Sophie Mery and Walid Yasin al Tikriti); 7) Patterns of mortality in a Bronze Age Tomb from Tell Abraq (Kathryn Baustian and Debra L. Martin); 8) Discerning health, disease and activity patterns in a Bronze Age population from Tell Abraq, United Arab Emirates (Janet M. Cope); 9) Early Bronze Age graves and graveyards in the eastern Jaalan (Sultanate of Oman): an assessment of the social rules working in the evolution of a funerary landscape.(J. Giraud); 10) An inventory of the objects in a collective burial at Dadna (Emirate of Fujairah) (Anne Benoist and Salah Ali Hassan); 11) Collective burials and status differentiation in Iron Age II Southeastern Arabia (Crystal Fritz); 12) Camelid and equid burials in pre-Islamic Southeastern Arabia (Aurelie Daems and An De Waele); 13) The emergence of mound cemeteries in Early Dilmun: new evidence of a proto-cemetery and its genesis c. 2050-2000 BC (Steffen Terp Laursen); 14) Probing the early Dilmun funerary landscape: a tentative analysis of grave goods from non-elite adult burials from City IIa-c (Eric Olijdam); 15) The Bahrain bead project: introduction and illustration (Waleed M. Al-Sadeqi); 16) The burial mounds of the Middle Euphrates (2100-1800 B.C.) and their links with Arabia: the subtle dialectic between tribal and state practices (Christine Kepinski); 17) Reuse of tombs or cultural continuity? The case of tower-tombs in Shabwa governorate (Yemen) (Remy Crassard, Herve Guy, Jeremie Schiettecatte and Holger Hitgen); 18) A reverence for stone reflected in various Late Bronze Age interments at al-Midamman, a Red Sea coastal site in Yemen (Edward J. Keall); 19) The Arabian Iron Age funerary stelae and the issue of cross-cultural contacts (Jeremie Schiettecatte); 20) Sabaean stone and metal miniature grave goods (Darne ONeil); 21) Excavations of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Yemen: a Minaean necropolis at Baraqish (Wadi Jawf) and the Qatabanian necropolis of Hayd bin Aqil (Wadi Bayhan) (Sabina Antonini and Alessio Agostini); 22) Funerary monuments of Southern Arabia: the Iron Age early Islamic tradition (Juris Zarins); 23) Burial contexts at Tayma, NW Arabia: archaeological and anthropological data (Sebastiano Lora, Emmanuele Petiti and Arnulf Hausleiter); 24) Feasting with the dead: funerary Marzea? in Petra (Isabelle Sachet); 25) Biomolecular archaeology and analysis of artefacts found in Nabataean tombs in Petra (Nicolas Garnier, Isabelle Sachet, Anna Zymla, Caroline Tokarski, Christian Rolando); 26) The monolithic djin blocks at Petra: a funerary practice of pre-Islamic Arabia (Michel Mouton); 27) Colouring the dead: new investigations on the history and the polychrome appearance of the Tomb of Darius I at Naqsh-e Rostam, Fars (Alexander Nagel and Hassan Rahsaz); 28) Introduction to the contributions on Arabia and the wider Islamic world (Janet Starkey); 29) The intercessor status of the dead in Maliki Islam and in Mauritania (Corinne Fortier); 30) Cairos City of the Dead: the cohabitation between the living and the dead from an anthropological perspective (Anna Tozzi Di Marco); 31) Observations on death, burial, graves and graveyards at various locations in Ras al-Khaimah Emirate, UAE, and Musandam wilayat, Oman, using local concerns (William and Fidelity Lancaster); 32) Shrines in Dhofar (Lynne S. Newton); 33) Wadi Ha?ramawt as a Landscape of Death and Burial (Mikhail Rodionov); 34) Attitudes, themes and images: an introduction to death and burial as mirrored in early Arabic poetry (James E. Taylor); 35) Jewish burial customs in Yemen (Dina Dahbany-Miraglia); 36) In anima vili: Islamic constructions on life autopsies and cannibalism (Jose M Bellido-Morillas and Pablo Garcia-Pinar); 37) Instituting the Palestinian dead body (Suhad Daher-Nashif).

Bringing together the latest research on megalithic monuments throughout the world, 150 researchers offer 72 articles, providing a region-by region account in their specialist areas, and a summary of the current state of knowledge. Highlighting salient themes, the book is vital to anyone interested in the phenomenon of megalithic monumentality.

This is the first volume of an exciting new project; Antiquity , drawing on its 75-year tradition of publishing articles of enduring value, has brought together twenty-four classic papers on a central archaeological theme. The papers have been selected to represent ancient and modern landscape approaches, organized into thematic sections: Early studies of Fox and Curwen, aerial photography of Bradford, Crawford and St Joseph, survey method, integrated regional landscapes, physical, industrial, contested and experienced landscapes. Each section is introduced with an overview and personal perspective by Simon Stoddart, the current editor of Antiquity . As he points out in the introduction, the editor of Antiquity has always drawn on the most exciting and relevant of current research. Consequently the frequency and content of landscape in Antiquity provides illuminating commentary on the definition and prominence of the theme landscape in archaeological research. Contents: Early studies of landscape: Prehistoric Cart-tracks in Malta ( T. Zammit ); Dykes ( Cyril Fox ); The Hebrides: a Cultural Backwater ( E. Cecil Curwen ); Native Settlements of Northumberland ( A. H. A. Hogg ). The impact of aerial photography: Woodbury. Two marvellous air-photographs ( O. G. S. Crawford ); Iron Age square enclosures in Rhineland ( K. V. Decker and I. Scollar ); Aerial reconnaissance in Picardy ( R. Agache ); Air reconnaissance: recent results ( J. K. St Joseph ). Survey method and analysis: Understanding early medieval pottery distributions ( A. J. Schofield ); Exploring the topography of the mind: GIS, social space and archaeology ( Marcos Llobera ). Integrated landscape archaeology: Neolithic settlement patterns at Avebury, Wiltshire ( Robin Holgate ); Stonehenge for the ancestors: the stones pass on the message ( M. Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina ); Aerial reconnaissance of the Fen Basin ( D. N. Riley ); The Fenland Project: from survey management and beyond ( John Coles and David Hall ); Siticulosa Apulia ( John Bradford and P. R. Williams-Hunt ); Archaeology and the Etruscan countryside ( Graeme Barker ). Physical landscapes: Active tectonics and land-use strategies: a Palaeolithic example from northwest Greece ( Geoff Bailey, Geoff King and Derek Sturdy ); A guide for archaeologists investigating Holocene landscapes ( A. J. Howard and M. G. Macklin ). Industrial landscapes: Trouble at t'mill: industrial archaeology in the 1980s ( C. M. Clark ); Towards an archaeology of navvy huts and settlements of the industrial revolution ( Michael Morris ). Contested landscapes: The Berlin Wall: production, preservation and consumption of a 20th-century monument ( Frederick Baker ); Seeing stars: character and identity in the landscapes of modern Macedonia ( Keith Brown ). Experienced landscapes: Forms of power: dimensions of an Irish megalithic landscape ( Jean McMann ); Late woodland landscapes of Wisconsin: ridges, fields, effigy mounds and territoriality ( William Gustav Gartner ).

This book, first published in 2007, offered the first and only summary of decades of archaeological research in the Oman Peninsula. The original eleven chapters are expanded and enhanced in this new edition by a number of new ‘windows’, written by a new generation of scholars, in order to include more recent research and interpretations.

This book examines the poorly understood transformations in rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires.