Walk the line: the 2020 field season of the Al-Mudhaybi Regional Survey

Authors

  • Stephanie Döpper Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

Keywords:

Survey, Transects, Central Oman, Find scatters, Landscape archaeology

Abstract

The Al-Mudhaybi Regional Survey seeks to produce a detailed and comprehensive knowledge of the landscape of the Al-Mudhaybi region in Central Oman. This paper presents the results of the 2020 field season, in which transects throughout the survey area were field-walked. The transects were equally spaced, at 4 km distance from each other, and ran north to south. Each transect was walked by a team of four, recording all surface finds with a hand-held GPS device. This method helped to identify more ephemeral structures, such as find scatters, thus providing statistically relevant data on site and artefact density in the region and, ultimately, on the settlement pattern and its diachronic development. At the southern end of the first transect completed in 2020, an Iron Age settlement was recorded near Sinaw. Additionally, this paper discusses small excavations carried out at three sites — Al-Batha, Mukhtru, and Al-Fath — which were conducted to provide a more precise chronology for them by radiocarbon dating. While radiocarbon dates on charcoal from the Mukhtru settlement site fall well into the Umm an-Nar period (2450–2050 BC), radiocarbon dates and pottery sherds from the presumably third-millennium BC tower at Al-Fath clearly indicate a reuse in the middle and late Islamic periods.

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Published

28/07/2022

How to Cite

Döpper, S. (2022). Walk the line: the 2020 field season of the Al-Mudhaybi Regional Survey. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 51, 157–167. Retrieved from https://archaeopresspublishing.com/ojs/index.php/PSAS/article/view/595

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