Early Neolithic Arabia

 

Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia have excavated eight ancient "standing stone circles" that they say were used as homes. About 345 of these structures were identified through aerial surveys across the Harrat 'Uwayrid, a lava field near the city of AlUla in northwestern Saudi Arabia, the team reported July 2 in the journal Levant. The circles range from 13 to 26 feet (4 to 8 meters) in diameter and have at least one standing stone at the center. The circles date back around 7,000 years and have the remains of stone walls and at least one doorway. They would have had roofs made of either stone or organic materials, the team wrote. . . . 

Around 7,000 years ago, the environment in northern Saudi Arabia was much wetter than it is today, but farming had not yet come into use. "There's no evidence of farming domesticated species of plants like wheat and barley, but gathering wild plants likely took place, and perhaps manipulating the landscape to increase the likelihood and yield of wild species," McMahon said.

When these standing stone circles were in use, another form of stone structure, known today as a mustatil (Arabic for "rectangle"), was being built as well. Excavations at the mustatils suggest they had a ritual purpose that may have included the sacrifice of cattle. The contemporaneous use of the mustatils and standing stone circles indicates that it is "likely that these two megalithic structure types are aspects of a single cultural entity," the team wrote.

Gary Rollefson, a professor emeritus of anthropology at Whitman College and San Diego State University who was not involved in the research but has conducted extensive archaeological work in the region, said he thinks the people who built the standing stone circles and mustatils are descended from people who lived in Jordan and Syria about 500 years earlier.

He told Live Science that the architecture of the standing stone circles is similar to that of structures found in Jordan dating to about 500 years earlier, and the people who built the structures in Jordan also herded sheep, goats and cattle. The migration may have been spurred by an increase in population brought about by new hunting technologies, such as the "kite," a series of stone walls used to force wild animals into a kill zone. These hunting advances dramatically increased the supply of food, which, in turn, led to an increase in the human population in the Jordan/Syria area.

"They were building up a large population in eastern Jordan and [parts of] Syria," Rollefson said, and they needed to find new hunting grounds, which would have led them to gradually go south, into what is now Saudi Arabia.

Via Live Science.

The paper indicates that there were post-Neolithic early herders, rather than primarily being hunter-gatherers.

The paper and its abstract are as follows:

Recent archaeological investigations in AlUla County have provided the first detailed chrono-cultural evidence for long-term Neolithic domestic occupation in this archaeologically unknown region of north-west Arabia. 

This paper presents the preliminary findings drawn from multi-scalar datasets collected through extensive aerial and ground surveys, and the excavations of ‘monumental’ architectural installations, named in this study as ‘Standing Stone Circles’. These structures were individual dwellings, constructed in concentrations of varying numbers with associated domestic installations, such as hearths. The Standing Stone Cicle sites presented in this paper demonstrate a scale of Neolithic occupation not previously recognized in Saudi Arabia. These structures provide evidence of ongoing occupation throughout the 6th and 5th millennia BCE, concurrent with a general florescence of human activity across north-west Arabia. The faunal remains indicate a mixed subsistence economy, dominated by domesticates but supplemented by wild species. 

Broader considerations of the Neolithic economy, and models of pastoralism and mobility, are made possible on the basis of this, and the associated assemblages of stone artefacts and small finds. The data provided in this article offers a general picture of the Neolithic period in AlUla, addressing the significant geographical and temporal gaps within the archaeological knowledge of north-west Arabia. The identification of diagnostic Late Neolithic Levantine projectile point types, in conjunction with architectural parallels with the Levant, provides further insight into the origins of neolithization in north-west Arabia.

Jane McMahon, et al., "New evidence for Neolithic occupation in north-west Arabia: Standing Stone Circles on the Harrat ‘Uwayrid'" Levant (July 2, 2024) (open access).