Prehistory in Northeastern Arabia

Abstract

In 1968 Geoffrey Bibby, then carrying out an archaeological survey in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was shown a collection of flint implements and ‘about two hundred potsherds, of a thin, greenish-yellow ware decorated with geometric patterns in dark-brown paint’ (1970, 376). They had been found by an American school teacher, Grace Burkholder, who, together with other amateur archaeologists from the headquarters of the Arabian American Oil Company at Dhahran, had scoured the nearby desert in pursuit of archaeological remains. Bibby with considerable astonishment recognized the pottery as identical with the Mesopotamian al ‘Ubaid.

The zoogeography of the mammal fauna of southern Arabia

“…For this reason the emphasis is on the examination of changes during the Pleistocene and Holocene as it is believed that these can go a long way to explaining contemporary distributions. Anton (1984) has recognized six main climatic phases since the late Pliocene, within the Arabian Peninsula: (a) a late Pliocene-early Pleistocene humid phase when lakes were present, extensive alluvial deposits laid down and the vegetation consisted of savanna and forest; (b) a protracted mid-Pleistocene arid phase which commenced about 1.1 M BP when a moderately dense xerophytic steppe vegetation occurred; (c) from 35 000 to 17 000 BP, a late Pleistocene humid phase resulted in lakes at An Nafud (Schulz & Whitney, 1986) and Rub a1 Khali (McClure, 1978); the latter supported such species as Bubalus, Bos primigenius and Hippopotamus; the vegetation was steppe and dry savanna in what was probably a cooler period with glaciers on the high mountains of Asir and Yemen (Hotzl et al, 1984b); (d) the late Pleistocene-early Holocene arid phase lasted from about 17 000 to 11 000 BP during which time cool steppe and desert conditions prevailed; (e) from 11 000 to 6000 BP there was an early Holocene humid phase when steppe and savanna once more occurred; the 150-km-long Lake Mundafan occurred in the Rub a1 Khali and there were once again lakes at An Nafud; these developments paralleled those of Lake Chad in Africa (Hotzl et al, 1984a); bovids were abundant in the Lake Mundafan area at this time as were equids in eastern Arabia (Oates, 1976);…”

On the Post-Ubaid stratigraphy and complex architecture of the Birecik Dam Area (Turkish Euphrates): Surtepe and Tilbes-Körche Late Chalcolithic 1 levels

“…The Late Chalcolithic (LC) 1 period of northern Mesopotamia in current chronology (Rothman, 2001) largely coincides with was previously known as Terminal Ubaid (Oates, 1976;Forest, 1996). The Terminal Northern Ubaid phase, called Ubaid 5 if we follow the sequence of Ubaid 0-4, with which the Ubaid period was designated in the chronological sequences of the late twentieth century, corresponds to the beginning of the Late Chalcolithic sequence, that is, LC1, what we call post-Ubaid, especially in the archaeological investigation of the present century.…”

The Kuwait-British Archaeological Expedition to As-Sabiyah: Report on the Second Season's Work

“…A similar vessel with smaller interlocking loops ( Fig. 5: H3/107), a surface find, has very precise parallels at Choga Mami (from "an early Ubaid 3 canal bed"), Oueili (Ubaid 3) and from Abu Khamis, north-east Arabia (Oates 1976Fig. 2: 8, Courtois and Velde 1987Fig.…”