The Middle Holocene ‘funerary avenues’ of north-west Arabia

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.

Following the herds? A new distribution of hunting kites in Southwest Asia

“…The more widespread cairn-form structures can be broken down into the morphological categories of simple circular stone mounds, ring tombs consisting of a central cairn with a frequently concentric surrounding wall, and pendant or tomb-with-tail structures, where a cairn ‘head’ has a linear wall ‘tail’ (for a description of cairn types see for example Dalton et al, 2022; Kennedy, 2011). There is some crossover in these forms, particularly in the crossover between ring tombs and pendants, where pendants have ring tomb ‘heads’.…”

“…In northwestern Arabia, pendants and ringed cairns, which are frequently aligned along routes, forming ‘funerary avenues’ have been attributed to the late middle Holocene, between the late third and first millennium BCE (Dalton et al, 2022; Kennedy, 2011). Although there is still some uncertainty around their age, their distribution suggests that they may be associated with access to water, placing them in the arid period after the end of the HHP (Dalton et al, 2022). The fact that structures associated with arid conditions are not found on the Al Labbah plateau indicates that the dense distribution of kites in this region may relate to the more favourable environmental conditions of the HHP.…”

“…them in the arid period after the end of the HHP (Dalton et al, 2022). The fact that structures associated with arid conditions are not found on the Al Labbah plateau indicates that the dense distribution of kites in this region may relate to the more favourable environmental conditions of the HHP.…”

“…This is in contrast to cairn structures, which are distributed along the southern and northern edges of the Nafud desert and across the At Taysiyah plateau in the south-east (Figure 3). In northwestern Arabia, pendants and ringed cairns, which are frequently aligned along routes, forming 'funerary avenues' have been attributed to the late middle Holocene, between the late third and first millennium BCE (Dalton et al, 2022;Kennedy, 2011). Although there is still some uncertainty around their age, their distribution suggests that they may be associated with access to water, placing Pollastro, 1998aPollastro, , 1998b and the Geological Map of the Arabian Peninsula created by the U.S. Geological Survey (1963).…”

Landscapes of Mobility and Movement in North-West Arabia: A Remote Sensing Study of the Neom Impact Zone

“…While it is difficult to assign a basic cairn structure and the ringed enclosures identified in this study to a defined chronological period, it seems probable that the latter at least, and possibly both structural forms would pre-date the Nabataean/Roman date inferred for the station. The implication is that this station may have been, perhaps unsurprisingly, situated within a long-established prehistoric route although the absence of pendants and only a single ringed tomb that may more convincingly be dated to the Bronze Age [24,34] limits how assertively this argument can be made. That this route may have been so potentially long-lived also supports the perception that the Gulf of Aqaba was a difficult navigational option for maritime traffic across history and a land-based route was deemed more viable [21].…”