In the early second millennium, the major settlement at Qalat al-Bahrain grew within the confines of an enormous city wall, built at the very end of the third millennium, encompassing some 15 ha. A large, palatial residence built of cut limestone ashlars, that continued to be used right through the Iron Age, was erected in this period. Cuneiform documents from Ur confirm that an important trade in copper ingots (originating in Oman) on their way to the cities of southern Mesopotamia passed through the hands of Dilmunite traders. A planned settlement at Saar, with streets, a temple, and a consistent set of multiroomed houses, was also inhabited. Furthermore, a colony of Dilmunites was established on Failaka, an island in the bay of Kuwait, at the head of the Gulf. Distinctive stamp seals with iconography showing humans and animals were used by Dilmunite traders, as a seal-impressed tablet recording trade in metals found at Susa, in southwestern Iran, attests. Relations with Oman, Dilmun’s copper source, are reflected in the presence of typical red-ridged, Dilmunite (so-called ‘Barbar’) pottery, at sites like Tell Abraq and Kalba in the UAE, the composition of some of which (from Tell Abraq) shows that it originated at Saar.
In Oman and the UAE, a change in diet is suggested by isotopic analyses of skeletal remains from collective tombs. Fewer terrestrial fauna (cattle, sheep, goat) were being consumed, while marine resources contributed a greater proportion of the protein intake than previously. Whether environmental conditions deterioriated at this time is unclear, though this has been invoked as a possible cause of settlement regression. Whereas tombs are abundant enough in the first 700 years of the second millennium, settlements became exceedingly scarce. A reversion to nomadism is unlikely, particularly as there is no evidence of camel domestication yet (see below). It is certain, however, that socioeconomic change occurred, visible in changes in ceramics, settlement pattern, and burial form. Graves were now either long, single-chambered structures (both semi-subterranean and above ground); ovoid, sometimes with an internal wall running the length of the chamber; or multichambered aggregates of roughly circular or oval spaces (perhaps built successively to house members of an extended group?). The evidence of contact with the outside world, so abundant in the late third millennium, is considerably less, though post-Harappan and Kaftari (Elamite) ceramics, at Tell Abraq and Shimal, as well as pottery and seals of Dilmunite type, reflect ongoing contact with foreign areas.
The Middle Bronze Age remains very poorly attested outside of eastern Arabia, and it is not until the Late Bronze Age that the archaeological sequences in northwestern and southwestern Arabia offer us much evidence.
World History
