The Middle Holocene ‘funerary avenues’ of north-west Arabia

Bibliographic Data

ID12267876
AuthorsM Dalton (0000-0002-1651-7384, Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia, corresponding author), Janne Mcmahon (0000-0002-5402-234X, Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia), Melissa A Kennedy (0000-0001-8620-938X, Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia), Rebecca Repper (0000-0002-7515-6558, Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia), Saifi Eisa Al Shilali (Royal Commission for AlUla, Khaybar, Saudi Arabia), Yousef AlBalawi (Independent Scholar, AlUla, Saudi Arabia), Yousef Abdullah Albalawi (0000-0002-4248-3659), David Boyer (0000-0003-2717-3393, The University of Western Australia), H Thomas (0000-0002-2232-7931, Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia)
Year2021
Volume32
Issue3
Pages183-199
Publication date2021-12-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Holocene (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0959-6836 • E-ISSN: 1477-0911
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/09596836211060497
OpenAlexW4200497591
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited58

The desert regions of the Arabian Peninsula and Levant are criss-crossed by innumerable pathways. Across large areas of north-west Arabia, many of these pathways are flanked by stone monuments, the vast majority of which are ancient tombs. Recent radiometric dating indicates that the most abundant of these monuments, elaborate and morphologically diverse ‘pendant’ structures, were constructed during the mid-to-late third millennium BCE. Thousands of kilometres of these composite path and monument features, ‘funerary avenues’, can be traced across the landscape, especially around and between major perennial water sources. By evidencing routes of human movement during this period, these features provide an emerging source for reconstructing important aspects of ancient mobility and social and economic connectivity. They also provide significant new evidence for human/environment interactions and subsistence strategies during the later Middle Holocene of north-west Arabia, and suggest the parallel existence of mobile pastoralist lifeways and more permanent, oasis-centred settlement. This paper draws upon the results of recent excavations and intensive remote sensing, aerial and ground surveys in Saudi Arabia to present the first detailed examination of these features and the vast cultural landscape that they constitute

Agriculture · Ancient history · Archaeology · Cave · Ephemeral key · Excavation · Geography · Holocene · Human settlement · Middle East · Middle Stone Age · Pastoralism · Peninsula · Period (music · Subsistence agriculture · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Ecology