Tens of thousands of burial tombs have been mapped in the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia as part of a project that has shed fresh light on life in previous millennia.
The Arabiancairns initiative, which began in 2022, has documented tombs on hilltops, terraces and plains over thousands of square kilometres.
The work, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), has highlighted evidence of agriculture and pinpointed trading links, offering new insights.
Initially supported for four years, the initiative has had its funding renewed into 2027 and more fieldwork is already planned.
Arabiancairns focuses on protohistoric Arabia, covering about 5500 BCE to 300 CE. This includes the Bronze Age, which ran from around 3200 BCE to 1300 BCE and the subsequent Iron Age, which lasted until about 300 BCE.
Uncovering rich history
Researchers are analysing the distribution of tombs and how they relate to the surrounding landscape, and the architecture of particular sites and how they were altered over time.
Chemical analysis helps the scientists understand how old sites are, what people ate and how they moved around.
Once the project is completed, a database of funerary monuments, giving their precise locations, will be made publicly available.
A key area analysed is around Bisya in central Oman, where, across about 4,700 square kilometres, around 5,500 tombs have been mapped and confirmed by foot surveys and satellite data.
“These monuments were built at different times, many contained several burials, and some were reused long after their original construction,” said Dr Olivia Munoz, from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) Trajectories Lab and the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.
At Dhabtiyah in eastern Saudi Arabia, similar patterns have been seen, with burial episodes within the same tomb separated by roughly a millennium.
“Our research also highlights similarities in funerary architecture and practices across large parts of Arabia, alongside regional differences,” Dr Munoz said.
“However, we cannot be certain what particular architectural features meant to their builders, or whether the same features carried the same meaning for different communities.”
Around Bisya, Dr Munoz said it seemed that much of the population – not just elites – could have been buried in the tombs, as there was no known alternative form of burial from the same period.
“Excavated tombs have yielded the remains of people of different ages, including children,” Dr Munoz added.
“Some contain a single person, while others were used for collective burial, with further individuals placed in the chamber as deaths occurred.
“The presence of children alongside adults suggests that some of these groups may have shared family ties, although this alone cannot establish kinship.”
Adding to the suggestion that there was not heavy social stratification is the fact that substantially larger homes that could have housed an elite have not been found.
However, it is possible, Dr Munoz said, that there were differences in social status that had not left any archaeological traces.
Rather than indicating the size of the population at any time, the abundance of tombs suggests that people lived in or regularly visited the region over a long period, Dr Munoz said.
The French Archaeological Mission to Central Oman, working at Bisya, is directed by Mathilde Jean of the Universite Paris Nanterre and Martin Sauvage of the CNRS Arscan Lab.
Cultural connections
Dr Munoz said there were similarities between the finds at Bisya and discoveries elsewhere, including at sites in the UAE.
“The beads discovered at Bisya, for example, have parallels at Hili, Jebel Hafit and Umm an-Nar, in what is now the UAE,” she said.
“The tomb architecture, likewise, belongs to traditions found across the Oman peninsula and, more broadly, elsewhere in the Arabian Peninsula.
“These similarities point to a shared culture, reflected in common knowledge, practices and tastes, as well as exchanges of goods between communities.”
However, such links do not indicate, Dr Munoz said, that there were direct connections between Bisya and other sites or that the communities were part of a single political identity.
“Rather, they point to communities with much in common, but also with local ways of life and probably their own networks of contacts and exchange,” she added.
Dr Munoz said that objects deposited with the dead offered clues about craftsmanship, personal adornment and exchange.
“For example, a shark tooth and hundreds of marine-shell beads found in one of the tombs point to contact with the coast,” she said.
Burgeoning trade routes
Also, imported pottery shows there were trading links that extended much further afield, to Mesopotamia, Iran and Balochistan, an historical region that covers parts of present-day Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“These finds show that inland communities participated in wider networks through which objects, materials and potentially ideas circulated, alongside foodstuffs or other products that may have been transported in pottery vessels,” Dr Munoz said.
Copper was a likely export, as during the Bronze Age the Oman peninsula was an important copper producer.
Dried or salted fish, animal hides, dates and other palm products, worked shell ornaments and stone used for vessels or sculpture may also have been exported.
Imports were probably equally varied, Dr Munoz said, with communities possibly obtaining textiles, grain, oils and other foodstuffs from Mesopotamia, and timber, textiles and ornaments from the Indus region, which straddles present-day Pakistan and India.
“Some of these products leave little archaeological trace,” she said. “Pottery survives much better, but a vessel may have travelled because of what it contained, rather than because someone wanted the pot itself.”
The presence of imported vessels at Bisya does not necessarily indicate that someone from there travelled to the place of manufacture, as the object could, Dr Munoz said, have reached a coastal settlement by boat and passed through several hands before arriving inland.
“Merchants and markets may have played a part, with goods moving between major settlements and then being distributed more locally,” she said.
At this time dromedary camels had not been domesticated, so goods may have been carried by people, donkeys or cattle.
While the tombs have yielded a wealth of fascinating information, some aspects of life remain tantalisingly out of reach in the absence of written records.
For example, Dr Munoz said it was difficult to reconstruct symbolic beliefs and political organisation from thousands of years ago.