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 staff led by Dr Guillaume Charloux of the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Venture 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.

Printed within the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, the brand new analysis supplies vital 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 necessary archaeological discovery highlights the Kingdom’s international significance within the area 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 reinforce 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 reminiscent of Khaybar had been rigorously managed and extremely valued landscapes that, with the arrival of agriculture, supported everlasting populations and should have been dynamic centres for regional exchanges and different interactions with the native cellular communities. This nascent urbanism and rising social complexity had a profound impression 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, reminiscent of Tayma and Qurayyah.

Often called 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 residence 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 staff at RCU is directing one of many world’s largest and most formidable archaeological analysis programmes, fulfilling its purpose to broaden international 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 necessary to Saudi Arabia and past. By commissioning and championing revelatory analysis on human exercise prior to now, such because the mission 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 area 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 staff recognized the al-Natah web site in October 2020, although the buildings and its format had been tough to discern. By February 2024 the staff had employed area surveys, focused excavation, and high-resolution pictures to realize 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 enormous desert populated by teams of nomadic pastoralists. The invention of the al-Natah web site, dated to the late Early and Center Bronze Ages, confirms that rural urbanism arose sooner than beforehand believed on this area. Straight accessible under the floor, al-Natah city represents nearly a thousand years of use that for the primary time makes it potential to think about the complexity of a sedentary settlement in a walled oasis throughout the Bronze Age.”

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

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

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

The brand new findings add to a flurry of research which since 2018 have explored options of historic AlUla and Khaybar together with monumental ritual buildings often known as mustatils, large-scale searching traps referred to 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 related to the broader area than beforehand believed. Through the coming autumn fieldwork season, RCU is supporting 10 archaeological tasks comprising greater than 100 archaeologists and related specialists in AlUla County and Khaybar.

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