The NeoArabia project tries to understand how environmental, social, economic and technological factors work in concert to influence settlement and abandonment along a latitudinal transect of 1200 km from UAE to southern Oman. This region was affected by wide north-south variations in the Indo-Arabian monsoon, marine upwelling activity and eustatic variations in the Mid-Holocene. On the local settlement scale, this transect is based on fine stratigraphic excavations and permits the reconstruction of the site formation processes and site catchment analysis. A large number of studies have been conducted on the Ruways-1 site, focusing on a deep stratified sequence corresponding to three millennia of occupation. These studies include on-site climate-environmental signal analysis, local palaeogeography and environmental reconstruction, reservoir effect studies, typo-technological studies, palaeoeconomic strategies, anthropological studies, sclerochronological studies and, finally, site formation processes, the understanding of which makes it possible to explain the potential and limits of the archaeological excavation. The first results confirm the richness of these archaeological archives for documenting the socio-environmental dynamics, but also the richness of its complex sedimentary structure and the importance of conducting fine and multidisciplinary excavations to answer questions about the rhythms and functions of occupations and the causalities of socioenvironmental changes. K E Y W O R D S Coastal Neolithic, geoarcheology, shell midden, site catchment, site formation processes, Sultanate of Oman F I G U R E 8 (a) Map of the Ruways micro-region with the proposed Neolithic extension of a wide open lagoon with mangrove ecosystems (in purple) and the two khors situated on each side of the current village of Ruways, with the position of the four geological cores (yellow stars) and the RWY-1 site (orange area). (b) Electrical resistivity tomography section of the current sabkha located in the western part of the RWY-1 site, with the main superficial sedimentary formations and the location of core 4. (c) Lithological sequence of core 4 with the radiocarbon dating series on shells in BP and in cal. yr BC age [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

The study of the fish bones from the Neolithic shell midden of Suwayh 1, excavated in the 2000s, identified a total of 1060 identifiable fish bones, from 23 families, 33 genera and 28 different species. Radiocarbon dating demonstrates that the sites date to the early 6th to mid 5th millennium BC. The results follow an eight‐phase chronology highlighted by an earlier malacological study. The most important taxa were the Carcharhinidae (requiem shark), Rhinopteridae (cownose rays), Sparoidea (Sparidae and Lethrinidae: sea breams and emperors) and Ariidae (sea catfishes). The results of the fish study show that the Suwayh lagoon must have gradually opened up to the sea and been populated with mangroves. The unique presence of so many sharks at this site seems to indicate that the inhabitants had a special interest in shark fishing and that their location was ideal for this specialised activity. Two types of fishing nets and hooks have been discovered, which require the use of different fishing techniques.

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Cats are hypercarnivorous, opportunistic animals that have adjusted to anthropogenic environments since the Neolithic period. Through humans, either by direct feeding and/or scavenging on food scraps, the diet of cats has been enriched with animals that they cannot kill themselves (e.g., large mammals, fish). Here, we conducted carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratio analysis to reconstruct the diet of medieval cats and investigate cat-human interactions in two medieval harbor sites (Qalhât, Oman and Siraf, Iran). The analysis included 28 cat individuals and 100 associated marine and terrestrial faunal samples pertaining to > 30 taxa. The isotopic results indicate a high marine protein-based diet for the cats from Qalhât and a mixed marine-terrestrial (C4) diet for the cats from Siraf. Cats at these sites most likely scavenged on both human food scraps and refuse related to fishing activities, with differences in the two sites most likely associated with the availability of marine resources and/or the living conditions of the cats. By shedding light on the dietary habits of cats from two medieval harbors in the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, this study illustrates the potential of stable isotope analysis in reconstructing human-cat interactions in the past.

Ra's al-Hamra 6 (RH-6) and Ra's al-Hamra 5 (RH-5) are two of the most important Neolithic coastal sites in the Sultanate of Oman. Located in the capital Muscat, they have supplied an important corpus of fish bones and revealed a high taxonomic richness in the different assemblages. The results provided information on fishing practices that held an important role in the subsistence strategies of the inhabitants during the two millennia of occupation (6 th -4 th millennia BC). Pelagic species (jacks and kawakawa/tunas) were largely dominant throughout both occupations, calling into question the interpretation of inshore or offshore fishing; these fish could have been caught with a hook-and-line or by setting nets at a reasonable distance from the coast. However, the inhabitants also had to supplement this subsistence by catching demersal fish and small fish, caught from the cliff, in the estuary or the mangrove. At both sites, the inhabitants clearly exploited the different nearby inshore environments: coastal open water, reefs, estuary and mangrove. Moreover, the high fish richness (69 genera at RH-6; 35 genera at RH-5) indicates that both sites could have been occupied on a year-round basis.

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