Dosariyah: An Arabian Neolithic Coastal Community in the Central Gulf

Description

Dosariyah: Reinvestigating a Neolithic coastal community in eastern Arabia' describes the work carried out at Dosariyah, located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, which took place between 2010 and 2014. It was conducted by the joint German-Saudi Dosariyah Archaeological Research Project (DARP). A wealth of material remains was found during excavations within almost three metres of anthropogenic deposits. Radiocarbon dates and comparative studies of artefacts securely date the occupation of the site into the first centuries of the fifth millennium BC. The co-occurrence of locally produced artefacts that are technologically and typologically rooted in the local Arabian Middle Neolithic, and imports from southern Mesopotamia is characteristic of Dosariyah. However, the mechanisms behind this distribution of foreign materials along the Arabian Gulf coast, in particular, are still poorly understood. It is the central proposition of this book that the local societies living along the shores of the Arabian Gulf coast played an active role in the acquisition of Ubaid pottery and other objects originating in southern Mesopotamia. A predominance of imported objects, considered as ‘exotic items’, are understood as integral components of rituals that were part of temporary gatherings of larger groups of people at Dosariyah. Based on the material evidence from the site, such collective social events were embedded in everyday life during the fifth millennium BC. Table of Contents Preface Chapter 1: The Site and its Context – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 2: Geomorphology, Geoarchaeology and Paleoenvironments – by Adrian G. Parker, Simon J. Armitage, Max Engel, Mike W. Morley, Ash Parton, Gareth W. Preston and Hannah Russ Chapter 3: Defining the Archeological Setting: the Dosariyah Survey – by Shumon T. Hussain and Felix Levenson Chapter 4: Geophysical Survey – by Martin Posselt Chapter 5: Archeological Surface Collections and Excavations – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 6: Dating Dosariyah – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 7: The Pottery – by Christine Kainert Chapter 8: Geochemical Analysis of Putative Local and Ubaid Ceramics from Dosariyah – by Peter Magee and Steven Karacic Chapter 9: Reworked Pottery – by Christine Kainert and Philipp Drechsler Chapter 10: Fired Clay Objects – by Christine Kainert Chapter 11: Lithic Industry – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 12: Variability of Arrowhead Shapes – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 13: Hematite Objects and the Use of Red Pigments – by Philipp Drechsler, Christoph Berthold and Christine Kainert Chapter 14: Bone Industry – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 15: Personal Adornment – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 16: Bitumen Objects – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 17: Chemical Composition of Bitumen – by Thomas Van de Velde Chapter 18: Plaster Morphology – by Philipp Drechsler Chapter 19: Morphological and Geochemical Analysis of Plaster Samples – by Susan M. Mentzer, Markus Seil, Hilmar Adler, Thomas Chassé, Bertrand Ligouis, Christoph Berthold and Christopher E. Miller Chapter 20: Faunal Remains and Subsistence Strategies – by Margarethe Uerpmann and Hans-Peter Uerpmann Chapter 2: Isotopic Analyses of Cattle Teeth – by Corina Knipper and Michael Maus Chapter 22: Archaeomalacology of Dosariyah: Diversity, Taphonomy and Distribution of Gastropods and Bivalves – by James H. Nebelsick, Philipp Drechsler and Paolo G. Albano Chapter 23: Exploitation of the Marine Snail Hexaplex kuesterianus – by Georg Häussler, James H. Nebelsick and Philipp Drechsler Conclusions – by Philipp Drechsler Epilogue