Funerary Landscapes, Contacts and Mobility in Bronze Age Northwest Arabia

该跨学科项目旨在首次系统地调查西北部阿拉伯绿洲的一个扩大的墓地。它的重点是青铜时代早期和青铜时代中期（c.）的墓葬景观。公元前3000 - 1500年），这是整个古代近东社会发生根本变化的时期。在Tayma绿洲（沙特阿拉伯）的周围，是随后的香路上的一个主要商业中心，现代表面上可见的数千个坟墓被保留下来。直到今天，它们还没有成为系统调查或研究的对象。最近在抢救行动中挖掘的一些坟墓中有武器，这些武器主要在叙利亚和黎凡特被认为是死者社会地位的标志。这些新发现引发了一场关于它们在阿拉伯西北部出现的情况及其意义的辩论。在这种背景下，群体或个人的跨区域流动性以及某些仪式埋葬习俗的广泛分布已经引起了讨论，需要深入研究。本调查旨在通过使用多种方法，确定与阿拉伯西北部青铜时代绿洲社会内社会分化相关的考古学和生物学因素，探索和揭露墓葬的社会偏见在泰马定居点完成的发掘已经为绿洲的社会组织提供了一些证据。该项目还旨在重建生活在古老绿洲及其周围地区的人口的生活方式和生存战略。与此同时，将调查定居的绿洲居民和移动的群体之间的相互联系，由于古代或近代对坟墓的操纵和干扰可能妨碍解释，在项目的筹备阶段，将仔细调查这些现象，以测试考古和生物来源的有效性，并进一步应用方法，更深入的研究。在不断扩大的现代定居点不断破坏坟墓的背景下，该项目有助于保护一个杰出的文化景观。从长远来看，将墓葬的证据与定居点的挖掘结果联系起来，将有助于在阿拉伯西北部绿洲的环境背景下重建社会生物适应过程。

The interdisciplinary project is aimed at investigating systematically for the first time an extended cemetery area of a north-western Arabian oasis. Its focus lies on a funerary landscape with burials of the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age (c. 3000 – 1500 BCE), a period of fundamental changes in societies all over the ancient Near East. In the surroundings of the oasis of Tayma (Saudi Arabia), a major commercial hub on the subsequent Incense Road, thousands of graves visible on the modern surface are preserved. Until today, they have not been object of systematic investigations or study. A number of graves which have been recently excavated in the frame of salvage operations contained weapons which are known mainly in Syria and the Levant as indicating the social status of the deceased. These new discoveries raised a debate on the circumstances of their appearance in north-western Arabia and their meaning. In this context, the supra-regional mobility of groups or individuals as well as the wide distribution of certain ritual burial practices have been called into discussion and are in need of in-depth research.The present investigation, by using a wide range of methods, aims at identifying archaeological and biological factors relevant to the social differentiation within a Bronze Age oasis society in north-western Arabia, exploring and exposing the burials’ social biases. The completed excavations in the settlement of Tayma provided already some evidence for the social organisation of the oasis. The project is also oriented towards reconstructing lifestyle and subsistence strategies of the population living in the ancient oasis and its surroundings. At the same time the interconnections between sedentary oasis dwellers and mobile groups will be investigated.Since ancient or recent manipulations and disturbances of graves may hamper interpretation, these phenomena, in a preparatory phase of the project will be carefully investigated in order to test the validity of the archaeological and biological sources and the applied methodology for further, more intensive research.In the context of a continuous destruction of the graves due to the expanding modern settlement, the project contributes to the preservation of an outstanding cultural landscape. On the long run, connecting the evidence from burials with the excavation results from the settlement will allow for a reconstruction of socio-biological processes of adaptation within the environmental context of a north-western Arabian oasis.