From Dilmun to Wādī al‐Fāw: A forgotten desert corridor, c. 2000 BC

Abstract

There is a lacuna of knowledge on the inland trade routes across Bronze Age central Arabia, which this article seeks to fill based on new evidence from Wādī al‐Fāw, Saudi Arabia. Contrary to a common belief that interior Southeast Arabia after the Holocene Humid Phase and until the domestication of the dromedary had turned desolate Badlands, this study offers documentation that during the early Bronze Age, a commercial corridor connected the Kingdom of Dilmun on the Arabian Gulf coast with the southern parts of Saudi Arabia, probably Yemen. Seals of Dilmun Type, Dilmun pottery and related burial praxis make up the gist of the evidence from Wādī al‐Fāw. A dry mummification mound burial custom is possibly identified at al‐Fāw and probably Taymāʾ, which contrasts the classic Dilmun mound burial custom. An attempt is made to reconstruct the most likely route that connected Dilmun and Wādī al‐Fāw. The emergence around 2000 BC of this trade network, likely based on donkey trains, closely coincides with the rise of the Kingdom of Dilmun, but surprisingly also with a time when Arabia witnessed unusually arid conditions. Identification of this unexpected ancient corridor should profoundly affect how upcoming models consider linguistic, ideological, genetic, cultural and technological transmission across Bronze Age Arabia.

Material Worlds: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Contacts and Exchange in the Ancient Near East

“…The study of long-distance connections in Western Asia continues to include the study of archaeological materials (cf., recently for Eastern and Central Arabia, e.g. Laursen -al-Otaibi 2022), but also led to an augmented integration of archaeometric methods, such as, e.g., petrography, residue or isotope analyses, thus drawing attention to raw materials, resources, and environments, while at the same time adding to the tangible aspects of contacts and exchange (cf., e.g., Huber et al 2022). Furthermore, the application of state-of-the-art remote sensing technologies transferred the reconstruction of trade routes on a new level (Städtler 2023), whereas the reconstruction of movement of people is currently object of analytical studies of ancient DNA; the investigation of climate change in this context aims at defining a larger framework for human agency.…”