Dosariyah is an archeological site in the Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia, dating to the late 6th and early 5th millennium

BCE Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

. The spectrum of archaeological remains relate the site to the Arabian

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

. The earliest samples of Ubaid style pottery in Saudi Arabia were found at Dosariyah. Funde

Location

The site is located about 12 km south of Jubail and 800 m inland from the present coastline of the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The bod ...

. Today it represents an approximately north–south orientated flat hill elevating about 2 m above the regular ground without a direct line of sight on the Persian Gulf. Southwards lies the

Sabkha A sabkha ( ar, سبخة) is a coastal, supratidal mudflat or sandflat in which evaporite-saline minerals accumulate as the result of semiarid to arid climate. Sabkhas are gradational between land and intertidal zone within restricted coastal p ...

as-Summ. The surrounding area is dominated by dunes and spare vegetation.

Discovery

Grace Burkholder first discovered Dosariyah in 1968. Scattered all over the area she found great amounts of painted and unpainted pieces of pottery, stonetools made from

Silex Silex is any of various forms of ground stone. In modern contexts the word refers to a finely ground, nearly pure form of silica or silicate. In the late 16th century, it meant powdered or ground up "flints" (i.e. stones, generally meaning the c ...

and Obsidian, Seashells, bones of mammals and fish as well as plaster. In the same year,

Geoffrey Bibby Thomas Geoffrey Bibby (14 October 1917 – 6 February 2001, Aarhus) was an English-born archaeologist. He is best known for discovering the ancient state of Dilmun, referred to in Mesopotamian mythology as a paradise. He is often considered to ...

dated the pottery to the Ubaid period and suggested further investigation on the site. In 1972 Abdullah H. Masry proofed at least 7 layers containing settlement debris to a depth of 2.50 m, separated by layers with only few finds. After these first excavations a massive fence was built around the site to protect it. Since 2010 a joint Saudi-German team from the Dammam Regional Museum and the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-W� ...

is re-excavating Dosariyah.

Dating

The range of findings as well as the stratigraphy date the main time of Dosariyah's habitation to the Arabian Neolithic and the Ubaid period.

Radiocarbon Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and c ...

dates from shells verify this assumption, dating to the late 6th and the early 5th millennium BC. Except a single potsherd from the Islamic Period and modern debris found on the surface there are no indicators for later settlements at this site. The good preservation of organic material makes Dosariyah an excellent example for the investigation of the Neolithic on the Arabian Peninsula.

Pottery and function of the settlement

The findings of Dosariyah contain elements of the local Arabic Neolithic as well as influences from southern Mesopotamia. Especially the large amount of imported Ubaid style pottery from southern Mesopotamia suggests intense cultural contacts. About 25% of Dosariyah's pottery is tempered with straw and minerals. This, therefore called “Coarseware”, is seen as a local pottery tradition. Ubaid style pottery is found at various sites along the southern coast of the

. Even though many of these sites contain only few Ubaid style sherds the great deal of imported pottery and obsidian at Dosariyah suggests its relevance within an extensive social and economic network. Several, up to 50 cm thick layers containing mostly shells of pearl oyster Pinctada radiata could be seen as evidence for pearling. If Dosariyah was a permanently inhabited settlement or a periodically used encampment established by herding nomads for trading, fishery etc. is object of the current investigations.

Obsidian trade

In Dosariyah, nine samples of Ubaid-associated obsidian were analyzed. They came from eastern and northeastern

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The ...

, such as from

Pasinler, Erzurum Pasinler or Basean ( tr, Pasinler; hy, Բասէն, translit=Pasēn; ka, ბასიანი, tr; la, Phasiani; el, Φασιανοί, translit=Phasianoí; formerly Hasankale and Hesenqele, meaning "the fortress of Hasan"), is a town in Erzur ...

, as well as from

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ' ...

. The obsidian was in the form of finished blade fragments.Lamya Khalidi, Bernard Gratuze, Gil Stein, Augusta Mcmahon, Salam Al-Quntar, et al.
The growth of early social networks: New geochemical results of obsidian from the Ubaid to Chalcolithic Period in Syria, Iraq and the Gulf.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Elsevier, 2016, ⟨halshs-01390232⟩

Notes

References

* Geoffrey Bibby: ''Looking for Dilmun.'' Knopf, New York 1969, * Geoffrey Bibby: ''Preliminary survey in East Arabia 1968.'' Gyldendal, Copenhagen 1973, * Grace Burkholder: ''Ubaid Sites and Pottery in Saudi Arabia.'' In: ''Archaeology 25'' (4), pp. 264–269, 1972 * Robert Carter &

Harriet Crawford Harriet Elizabeth Walston Crawford (born 1937) is a British archaeologist. She is Reader Emerita at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and a senior fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. Life Harriet ...

: ''Maritime Interactions in the Arabian Neolithic. The Evidence from H3, As-Sabiyah, an Ubaid-related site in Kuwait.'' Brill, Leiden 2010, * Philipp Drechsler: ''Places of contact, spheres of interaction. The Ubaid phenomenon in the central Persian Gulf area as seen from a first season of reinvestigations at Dosariyah (Dawsāriyyah), Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia.'' In: ''Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 41.'' 2011 * Abdullah Hassan Masry: ''Prehistory in northeastern Arabia. The Problem of Interregional Interaction.'' Kegan Paul International, London and New York 1997, {{ISBN, 0-7103-0536-2 * L.J. Oates, D. Kamilli, H. McKerrel: ''Seafaring Merchants of Ur?'' In: ''Antiquity 51'' pp. 221–234, 1977 * M. Roaf, J. Galbraith: ''Pottery and p-values: 'Seafaring merchants of Ur?' re-examined.'' In: ''Antiquity 68'' (261), pp. 770–783, 1994

External links

Description of the current project
by the DFG(German) Archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia Ubaid period