Kites of AlUla County and the Ḥarrat ʿUwayriḍ, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

A comprehensive remote sensing survey of AlUla County in north‐west Saudi Arabia has revealed 32 examples of the ancient, stone‐built animal traps known as ‘kites’. Noting that most (27) are located on the Ḥarrat ʿUwayriḍ, a satellite survey of parts of that lavafield outside of AlUla County was undertaken, identifying a further 175 kites. These show commonalities with ‘V‐shaped’ kites previously identified in mountainous areas along the western extents of the Arabian Shield in the Sinai Peninsula, Negev Desert and south‐west Saudi Arabia. A study of the form and placement of these kites in their ecological and geological contexts suggests that they are representative of a distinct complex, exhibiting sophisticated morphological adaptations to target specific games over similar terrain.

Landscapes of Mobility and Movement in North-West Arabia: A Remote Sensing Study of the Neom Impact Zone

“…Chronological dating of this kite form remains problematic and while a broad phase of use from the 5th-3rd millennium BCE has been proposed based on fieldwork in the Negev [35], further dating samples are required to support this understanding. While the new dataset recorded in the present survey cannot add anything to that discussion, even in terms of relative chronology, it has provided a geographical link between known distributions in the southern Levant and those recorded more recently further to the southeast in western Saudi Arabia [36,37].…”