At the fringes of southeastern Arabia’s Iron Age

• Applicant: Dr. Conrad Schmidt
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 572508476

The Iron Age II (1100–600 BCE) in southeastern Arabia is characterized by a sudden increase in settlements. It gave rise to new social structures as well as administrative and religious innovations, such as the falaj, the domestication of the camel and a new widespread snake cult. Just as rapid as the foundation is the abandonment of many of the sites at the end of the Iron Age II. Oman’s Early Iron Age is much less investigated than that of the United Arab Emirates, especially in the alluvial plains in the south of Central Oman at the transition to the desert. Here, we lack not only information on the adaptations of its communities to their marginal environment, but also on the chronology. Within the research project “At the fringes of southeastern Arabia’s Iron Age”, the subsistence and economic bases, as well as other characteristics, of a Central Omani Early Iron Age site located on the southern limits of the Early Iron Age distribution will be investigated and compared to sites in the north. The project’s objectives are to reconstruct how society adapted to its environment, study the availability of natural resources and anthropogenic environmental changes, and establish a collective chronological framework for the entire region. The object of study is a well-preserved settlement on the northern outskirts of Sinaw. The site contains several building structures, some of which consist of more than two metres high anthropogenic accumulations. It will be investigated over the course of three field seasons, two of which will be dedicated to the partial excavation of two selected buildings, and one to intensive sedimentological studies in the immediate vicinity of the site, where gardens with irrigation systems are expected. After the documentation and description of the construction and use phases, a chronological assessment is conducted, which requires, above all, a precise study of the sequence of stratified pottery and its absolute dating. A workshop towards the end of the project will help integrate Sinaw’s ceramic sequence and correlate the single ceramic traditions of the north and south. The expected results of the project are (1) to gain detailed insights into the subsistence strategies and grade of mobility, craft specialisation, architecture and its domestic, public, administrative and cultic functions, access to and use of natural resources, anthropogenic environmental changes, as well as participation or non-participation in interregional exchange in Central Oman during the Early Iron Age, (2) to contribute to a common chronology for the Early Iron Age across southeastern Arabia and draw conclusions about common and different regional cultural developments, and (3) to find reasons for both the sudden foundation and sudden abandonment of numerous Early Iron Age sites in Oman and the UAE.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants