String of coastal sites 'indicates Bronze Age shipping route'

A string of archaeological sites discovered on the islands and shorelines of Abu Dhabi and Qatar indicates a Bronze Age route used by merchant ships, a conference was told yesterday.

Dr Robert Carter of the Institute of Archaeology at the University College of London, who is also a ceramic specialist with the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey, said numerous coastal and island sites have been found in Abu Dhabi and Qatar, and ceramic and carbon analysis dates them to the Bronze Age.

Carter described this in his paper "Tracing Bronze Age Trade on Coastal and Island Sites in Abu Dhabi and Qatar" on the second day of the First International Conference on Archaeology of the UAE. The conference is examining the history of the country from the Late Stone Age about 7,500 years ago to the late Islamic period.

Carter said, "What I believe we have is a series of way-stations located on islands which were otherwise uninhabited in the late third and early second millennium BC. "My hypothesis is that these sites delineate the route taken by Bronze Age merchant shipping between Bahrain and the Northern Emirates during the Qalat Al Bahrain City II period, probably en-route to the Harappan and Late Harappan world."

The location of the way-stations was determined by the presence of sheltered but accessible anchorages, the navigational techniques of the time and probably the availability of water and wood.

"If this hypothesis is accepted, we are in a position to make inferences regarding sailing and navigational techniques of the time, the distance and likely length of time taken for journeys and perhaps the seasons travelled," Carter said.

Dr Soren Blau of the Australian National University in Canberra, who has worked in the UAE, presented a paper on third millennium BC graves. She described the architectural designs of the tombs and the burial items found in them. Blau said relatively little attention has been paid to human skeletal remains in the tombs, and the burials and tombs have yet to be viewed in a contextual manner.

Dr Sabah Jassim of the Sharjah Directorate of Archaeology discussed Third Millennium BC culture in Sharjah. He described the contents of newly-identified tombs at Jebel Buhais and Mileiha and considered the implications of their discovery. The conference ends tomorrow.