It has been widely assumed that ancient settlement in the Arabian Desert corresponds with periods of increased precipitation. Recent archaeological discoveries, however, contradict this assumption. Work by the Dubai Department of Archeology has revealed that significant human settlement took place after the Holocene Climatic Optimum (6000 - 4200 BC) in the Rub? al-Khali desert in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This suggests that either the history of settlement or the reconstructed sequence of environmental change in the Arabian Desert is not entirely understood.
Under the supervision of Dr. Jesse Casana, Jason Herrmann will seek to address these issues through coordinated archaeological and paleoenvironmental investigations with the objective of establishing separate chronologies of human settlement and of landscape change that can be used to assess the relationship between available precipitation and desert settlement in southeast Arabia. Investigations will focus on three archaeological sites in Dubai, UAE: a large Arabian Neolithic site (DDS-4/8), a third millennium BC site featuring a substantial midden and exposed hearths (Al-Ashoosh), and a very large metal processing site from the first millennium BC (Saruq al-Hadid). Archaeological investigations will consist of surface survey, geophysical mapping, test excavations, and various dating methods at the three archaeological sites, with the goal of developing chronologies of occupation at each site and determining the continuity or discontinuity of desert settlement in the region. Parallel paleoenvironmental investigations will include near-surface geophysics and direct dating of wind-blown sediments in surrounding dunes to serve as a proxy for aridity, thereby providing a history of landscape change. These two independent chronologies will then be compared to assess whether there is a linear correlation between climate change and settlement patterns. Synchronized cycles of aridity and periods of abandonment would support the assumption that the desert was only occupied during relatively moist periods. Anything other than coordinated cycles of settlement and environmental change would suggest that more complex relationships between settlement patterns and environmental change are at work. The results of this research could advance our understanding of the settlement and environmental histories in this poorly documented region and will offer valuable insight into ancient settlement and land use in arid environments worldwide.
More broadly, this project will promote the creation of educational opportunities, the dissemination of information to the public, and the preservation of archaeological sites in the UAE. As part of the Dubai Desert Survey, a collaborative effort by American researchers and the Dubai Department of Archaeology, this project will provide fieldwork opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Arkansas and the UAE. Results of this project will be featured in exhibits and educational literature at the Jumeirah Archaeological Museum in Dubai and will influence government-sponsored public interpretation and management efforts at the study sites. Finally, the project will help protect threatened archaeological sites in Dubai. As the city of Dubai continues to grow at an unprecedented pace, construction is expanding into previously uninhabited desert regions, threatening undiscovered archaeological remains in a country where there are few procedures for protection of cultural resources.
