Archaeologists discover Al-Natah, in the Khaybar oasis of north-west Arabia

New archaeological analysis has revealed an distinctive Bronze Age city within the Khaybar oasis of north-west Saudi Arabia. The invention by a crew led by Dr Guillaume Charloux of the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Challenge and Dr Munirah Almushawh from the Royal Fee for AlUla (RCU) confirms a significant transition from cellular, nomadic life to settled, city life within the second half of the third millennium BCE.

Revealed within the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, the brand new analysis offers important proof to additional problem the image of cellular pastoral-nomadism because the dominant financial and social lifestyle of northwest Arabia within the Early and Center Bronze Ages.

Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud, Governor of the Royal Fee for AlUla and Minister of Tradition for Saudi Arabia, acknowledged: “This essential archaeological discovery highlights the Kingdom’s world significance within the discipline of archaeology and confirms the depth of civilisation that the land holds. This discovery reinforces the Kingdom’s efforts in defending cultural and historic heritage and emphasises the significance of exchanging data and experience with the world to boost consciousness of our shared human heritage.”

He added, “This discovery confirms the Kingdom’s dedication to preserving the world’s heritage and selling cultural heritage in accordance with the provisions of Saudi Imaginative and prescient 2030. It additionally highlights the significance of strengthening worldwide partnerships to current this wealthy legacy to future generations and the world.”

It additionally implies that oases resembling Khaybar had been fastidiously managed and extremely valued landscapes that, with the appearance of agriculture, supported everlasting populations and will need to have been dynamic centres for regional exchanges and different interactions with the native cellular communities. This nascent urbanism and growing social complexity had a profound influence on socio-economic organisation within the area.

Whereas northwest Arabia within the Bronze Age was largely populated by pastoral cellular teams, the area was additionally dotted with interconnected, monumental walled oases centred round small fortified settlements, resembling Tayma and Qurayyah.

Often known as al-Natah, the newly found city in Khaybar is the primary to offer clear proof for differentiated purposeful areas – notably residential and funerary – inside fortifications. Al-Natah was constructed round 2400-2000 BCE and endured till 1500-1300 BCE. The small city was dwelling to some 500 folks in its 2.6 hectares and was protected by the 15-kilometre stone rampart that encircled the Khaybar oasis.

The brand new analysis was sponsored by the Royal Fee for AlUla (RCU) and the French Company for the Growth of AlUla (AFALULA). The Archaeology, Collections and Conservation crew at RCU is directing one of many world’s largest and most formidable archaeological analysis programmes, fulfilling its aim to broaden world consciousness of the AlUla area as a premier cultural heritage panorama and vacation spot.

The cultural heritage of north-west Arabia is wealthy, advanced and essential to Saudi Arabia and past. By commissioning and championing revelatory analysis on human exercise previously, such because the challenge that produced these new findings in Khaybar, RCU demonstrates its management in regional archaeological analysis and its accountable custodianship of cultural heritage property and panorama.

The Khaybar oasis is located on the fringe of the Harrat Khaybar lava discipline and fashioned by the confluence of three wadis amid an in any other case largely arid space. On the northern outskirts of the oasis, al-Natah lay buried beneath piles of basalt boulders for millennia.

The analysis crew recognized the al-Natah website in October 2020, although the buildings and its structure had been troublesome to discern. By February 2024 the crew had employed discipline surveys, focused excavation, and high-resolution images to attain an understanding of what lay beneath. Extra intensive excavation sooner or later may sharpen the image.

Dr Charloux, from the French Nationwide Centre for Scientific Analysis (CNRS), acknowledged: “Our discovery challenges the traditional mannequin of north-west Arabia within the Bronze Age as an unlimited desert populated by teams of nomadic pastoralists. The invention of the al-Natah website, dated to the late Early and Center Bronze Ages, confirms that rural urbanism arose sooner than beforehand believed on this area. Instantly accessible beneath the floor, al-Natah city represents nearly a thousand years of use that for the primary time makes it doable to think about the complexity of a sedentary settlement in a walled oasis in the course of the Bronze Age.”

The findings by the RCU-AFALULA-CNRS crew paint a preliminary image of what life was like for folks in al-Natah. They lived in dwellings maybe paying homage to conventional Arabian tower homes, with the bottom stage probably used for storage, and the residing areas on one or two storeys above. They walked alongside slender streets to succeed in the centre of city. They buried their useless in stepped tower tombs, grouped collectively to type a necropolis. In some tombs they paid tribute to a maybe ‘warrior’ class, by laying valuable presents in these tombs – resembling ceramics, beads and metallic weapons, together with axes and daggers.

The folks wore beads, ready meals with mortar and pestle, and made and traded pottery, travelling the regional alternate community by donkey. They labored metals, grew cereals and raised animals – the native eating regimen was heavy on sheep and goat. They labored communally to strengthen their rampart with dry-laid stones (no mortar) and uncooked earth.

The analysis crew included two Saudis working for RCU, Dr Munirah Almushawh, a co-director of the challenge, and Saifi Alshilali, a historian and a member of the local people in Khaybar.

The brand new findings add to a flurry of research which since 2018 have explored options of historical AlUla and Khaybar together with monumental ritual buildings often known as mustatils, large-scale looking traps known as ‘desert kites’, long-distance ‘funerary avenues’ that linked settlements and pastures by pathways lined with tombs, and Neolithic dwellings often known as ‘standing stone circles’.

Collectively the research present that the early societies of north-west Arabia had been extra advanced and linked to the broader area than beforehand believed. In the course of the coming autumn fieldwork season, RCU is supporting 10 archaeological initiatives comprising greater than 100 archaeologists and related specialists in AlUla County and Khaybar.

The invention furthers the emergence of AlUla and Saudi Arabia as world centres for archaeological analysis and intercultural dialogue. It follows the AlUla World Archaeology Symposium (AWAS 2024) which passed off on Oct 30-31 and noticed an interdisciplinary group of archaeologists and cultural heritage practitioners from world wide to discover the theme “Transferring ahead: previous, current and future within the archaeology and heritage of cellular communities”.