Abstract

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.

The monumental stone structures of the Arabian Peninsula have been notoriously difficult to date. Due to their visibility in the landscape, they have suffered from extensive robbing and later reuse, which has compromised dating methodologies. In particular, our understanding of when the elaborate “pendants” (also known as “tailed cairns” or “tailed tower tombs”) of north‐west Arabia were first constructed has remained incomplete. Recent work undertaken by the Aerial Archaeology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – Khaybar project provides some of the first radiometric dates for the pendants of Saudi Arabia. These structures can now be dated as far back as the third millennium BCE, revealing for the first time a hitherto undocumented, large‐scale, monumental funerary landscape dating to the Early Bronze Age. These radiocarbon dates bring the advent of the pendant building tradition in line with funerary developments across the wider Arabian Peninsula, and may mark a profound reconfiguring of the wider Harrat Khaybar landscape during the third millennium BCE.

A comprehensive remote sensing survey of AlUla County in north‐west Saudi Arabia has revealed 32 examples of the ancient, stone‐built animal traps known as ‘kites’. Noting that most (27) are located on the Ḥarrat ʿUwayriḍ, a satellite survey of parts of that lavafield outside of AlUla County was undertaken, identifying a further 175 kites. These show commonalities with ‘V‐shaped’ kites previously identified in mountainous areas along the western extents of the Arabian Shield in the Sinai Peninsula, Negev Desert and south‐west Saudi Arabia. A study of the form and placement of these kites in their ecological and geological contexts suggests that they are representative of a distinct complex, exhibiting sophisticated morphological adaptations to target specific games over similar terrain.

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