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 workforce led by Dr Guillaume Charloux of the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Undertaking and Dr Munirah Almushawh from the Royal Fee for AlUla (RCU) confirms a significant transition from cell, 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 gives vital proof to additional problem the image of cell 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, said: “This necessary archaeological discovery highlights the Kingdom’s world significance within the subject 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 information 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 resembling Khaybar had been fastidiously managed and extremely valued landscapes that, with the arrival of agriculture, supported everlasting populations and will need to have been dynamic centres for regional exchanges and different interactions with the native cell communities. This nascent urbanism and growing 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 cell 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 practical 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 house 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 workforce 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, complicated and necessary to Saudi Arabia and past. By commissioning and championing revelatory analysis on human exercise previously, such because the venture 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 subject 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 workforce recognized the al-Natah web site in October 2020, although the constructions and its format had been troublesome to discern. By February 2024 the workforce had employed subject surveys, focused excavation, and high-resolution pictures to attain an understanding of what lay beneath. Extra in depth excavation sooner or later might sharpen the image.

Dr Charloux, from the French Nationwide Centre for Scientific Analysis (CNRS), said: “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 beneath the floor, al-Natah city represents virtually a thousand years of use that for the primary time makes it attainable to contemplate the complexity of a sedentary settlement in a walled oasis in the course of the Bronze Age.”

The findings by the RCU-AFALULA-CNRS workforce 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 degree presumably used for storage, and the dwelling areas on one or two storeys above. They walked alongside slim streets to succeed in 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 treasured 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 workforce included two Saudis working for RCU, Dr Munirah Almushawh, a co-director of the venture, 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 historic AlUla and Khaybar together with monumental ritual constructions often called mustatils, large-scale searching traps known as ‘desert kites’, long-distance ‘funerary avenues’ that linked settlements and pastures by pathways lined with tombs, and Neolithic dwellings often called ‘standing stone circles’.

Collectively the research present that the early societies of north-west Arabia had been extra complicated and linked to the broader area than beforehand believed. In the course of 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 world centres for archaeological analysis and intercultural dialogue. It follows the AlUla World Archaeology Symposium (AWAS 2024) which occurred on Oct 30-31 and noticed an interdisciplinary group of archaeologists and cultural heritage practitioners from around the globe to discover the theme “Shifting ahead: previous, current and future within the archaeology and heritage of cell communities”.