The decline of Magan and the rise of Dilmun: Umm an‐Nar ceramics from the burial mounds of Bahrain, c.2250–2000 BC

Abstract

This article outlines some general aspects of the Magan and Dilmun trade and goes on to examine the Umm an‐Nar pottery discovered in the tombs of the Early Dilmun burial mounds of Bahrain. These ceramics are of particular interest because they indirectly testify to Dilmun’s contact with Magan in the late third millennium. In this article, thirty vessels of seven morphological types are singled out. By comparison with the material published from the Oman peninsula the Bahrain collection is tentatively dated to c.2250–2000 BC. The location of the Umm an‐Nar pottery within the distribution of burial mounds reveals that its import was strongly associated with the scattered mounds of Early Type. It is demonstrated that the frequency of Umm an‐Nar pottery declined just as the ten compact cemeteries emerged c.2050 BC. The observed patterns are seen as a response to the decline of Magan and the rise of Dilmun.

Geographic origins and dietary transitions during the bronze age in the oman peninsula

“…Tomb artifacts also underwent substantial technological and stylistic changes (Potts, 1997). The impressive technical competence exhibited by Umm an-Nar potters was seemingly lost, illustrated by a notable decline in the manufacturing and artistic quality of Wadi Suq ceramics (Laursen, 2009;Potts, 2009). While vessels were made of local clays in both periods, the coarse wares of the later Wadi Suq contrast dramatically with the fine, painted wares of the preceding Umm an-Nar (Vogt and Franke-Vogt, 1987).…”

Greed Is Bad, Neutral, and Good: A Historical Perspective on Excessive Accumulation and Consumption

“…The earliest references to the generation of wealth in forms other than conquest are to the activities of merchants, traders, and other entrepreneurs in Assyrian epigraphic texts of the third millennium bce (Dercksen, 1999). Trade within and between the Mesopotamian polities and the Meluhhans (Indus polities in South Asia) via the ports of Magan and Dilmun (Oman) clearly took place with a significant amount of commercial investment (Laursen, 2009(Laursen, , 2010Yoffee, 2004). The growth of commercial and mercantile middlemen in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Iranian Plateau, and Indus (South Asia) paralleled the growth of states and was apparently utilized by many of these states for their benefit (Stein, 1999).…”

Specialization and social inequality in Bronze Age SE Arabia: analyzing the development of production strategies and economic networks using agent-based modeling

“…For example, Crawford (1996Crawford ( , 1998, Laursen (2009) and Højlund (2007) have highlighted the effects of variations in the scale and structure of long-distance Bronze Age exchange in the greater Persian Gulf region on socio-economic developments in Dilmun (Bahrain island and the adjacent coast of Saudi Arabia) and neighboring lands. Others have modeled the societies of the Persian Gulf region as peripheries to a Bronze Age economic "world system" centered on Mesopotamia (Edens, 1992;Edens and Kohl, 1993).…”