Lacustrine sediments from southeastern Arabia reveal variations in lake level corresponding to changes in the strength and duration of Indian Ocean Monsoon (IOM) summer rainfall and winter cyclonic rainfall. The late glacial/Holocene transition of the region was characterised by the development of mega-linear dunes. These dunes became stabilised and vegetated during the early Holocene and interdunal lakes formed in response to the incursion of the IOM at approximately 8500 cal yr BP with the development of C3 dominated savanna grasslands. The IOM weakened ca. 6000 cal yr BP with the onset of regional aridity, aeolian sedimentation and dune reactivation and accretion. Despite this reduction in precipitation, the lake was maintained by winter dominated rainfall. There was a shift to drier adapted C4 grasslands across the dune field. Lake sediment geochemical analyses record precipitation minima at 8200, 5000 and 4200 cal yr BP that coincide with Bond events in the North Atlantic. A number of these events correspond with changes in cultural periods, suggesting that climate was a key mechanism affecting human occupation and exploitation of this region.

With contributions by Mark Beech (University of York, U.K.), Adrian Parker (School of Geography, University of Oxford, U.K.) and Alan Pipe (Museum of London Archaeological Service, U.K.

This paper lists and reviews the archaeological evidence for the Sasanian period in eastern Arabia (third–seventh centuries AD). Much of the published evidence is shown to be either erroneous or highly doubtful, leaving very little evidence that is reliable. It is argued that the paucity of evidence in comparison to the Hellenistic/Parthian period indicates that this was a time of marked and continuing decline in the number and size of settlements, the number of tombs and the amount of coinage in circulation, all of which probably result from a population that was both declining in size and participating less in the types of production and consumption that leave discoverable traces in the archaeological record. This is in contrast to the historical evidence, which, although patchy, is stronger for the Sasanian period than it is for the Hellenistic/Parthian period. The argument for decline challenges some generally accepted historical views of eastern Arabia at this time, which see the region as undergoing a notable period of growth. In conclusion, some brief consideration is given to the possible causes of the decline.

This article summarizes the outcome of a workshop sponsored by the Durham University Centre for Iranian Cultural Studies, where papers were presented on the entire chronological range of water management systems in Iran from around 8000 years bc until around 1000 ad. The primary aim was to recognize major research questions that could be used to create an agenda for future studies of ancient water use in the country. In the Durham meeting, it appeared that although the small-scale prehistoric systems probably constituted an example of ‘human niche construction’, the later imperial systems did not. Despite the recognition of occasional irrigation systems of third millennium bc date in the Deh Luran plain by Neely and Wright, as well as perhaps in Khuzestan, there appears to be a general dearth of evidence of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age systems in Iran. However, by the first millennium bc there was a considerable increase in the construction of major water management systems, some of which were, at least as far as the associated evidence suggests, constructed by imperial authorities. All agreed, however, that just because a system appeared large in scale, it was not necessarily a result of imperial management. For the subject of qanats it was argued that not only were they usually built by small-scale societies, but also that there may have been multiple centres of origin; one primary centre being a broad zone of south-east Iran, Pakistan and south-east Arabia

The fourteenth-sixteenth-century town of Julfar (al-Mataf) in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) is one of the most fully investigated archaeological sites in the Gulf, having been the subject of seven different excavation projects. Evidence from the published reports, when brought together, provides a detailed and coherent picture of the development of the site from a small fishing community in the mid-fourteenth century to a fully urbanised settlement by the mid-fifteenth century, and then attests to its eventual decline and abandonment by the late sixteenth century.Julfar was the first example of true urbanism in this part of Arabia, and therefore marks a significant historical turning point. Its development is believed to have been linked to the expanding mercantile economy of Hormuz, but it occurred at the same time as a period of spectacular rural growth in its own immediate hinterland, evidence for which has been produced by archaeological field survey. Together these phenomena suggest the development of a local market economy, perhaps for the first time, which would have had significant implications for the social and economic structure of the area.