With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Kimberly Williams and Lesley Gregoricka will conduct three field seasons of bioarchaeological and geospatial research on Early Bronze Age (ca. 3100-2000 BC) mortuary sites in northern Oman. This study seeks to investigate shifts in mortuary traditions over time -- including (a) the construction of monumental tombs, (b) the geographic origins of the individuals interred within these structures, and (c) tomb placement on the landscape -- as a reflection of changing perceptions of rural identity in response to growing interregional interaction with urban areas. As a highly visible burial center at the crossroads of these interregional trade routes, the Al Khubayb Necropolis provides a unique opportunity to examine these temporal changes during a formative period of transition in the Oman Peninsula, in part by recognizing the importance of Transitional tomb forms.
The research objective is to evaluate these tombs as symbols of the changing socioeconomic roles of these Early Bronze Age communities, as rural areas increasingly engaged with large urban centers to provide them with much-desired resources, including copper. As engagement in interregional exchange networks increased, local social hierarchies would have developed, causing conflict between traditional, kin-based tribal factions and those with increasing power over aspects of trade and monument construction. Such conflict in group identity will be visible in the form of conflicting mortuary customs simultaneously attempting to promote and suppress social differentiation.
This study also posits that increasingly complex exchange networks will result in significant variability in strontium and oxygen isotopic signatures (incorporated via diet into the teeth of the individuals who lived and died in the Early Bronze Age), not only because of increased regional mobility between the interior of the peninsula and the coast (due to the mining and transport of copper), but also because of emerging interregional economic ties with the larger Persian Gulf. Correspondingly, this project seeks to identify broader shifts in isotopic variation between early and later periods as a correlate of regional and interregional mobility associated with changing forms of social organization and definitions of group identity.
The goal of this research program is to provide new perspectives on the question of identity formation in the periphery. This will be accomplished not by focusing on the intensively studied end-points of trade, such as Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, but in the hinterlands of Oman, where goods were actively processed and trade carried out. Much research in the past has focused on the interaction of large, core power brokers with one another; this research will be transformative because of its focus on a relatively invisible rural people, whose existence as semi-nomadic pastoralists is poorly understood. As opposed to viewing changing mortuary and mobility patterns as wholly defined by the influence of interregional exchange with urban areas including Mesopotamia, such an approach takes agency into account by focusing on the adaptations of local communities to the social hierarchies that developed from exposure to these trade systems.
The broader impacts of this study include the education and training of local Omanis as part of building a more successful program of archaeological heritage in Oman. Additionally, this project is committed to increasing student diversity and providing learning and research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Students will not only receive training in bioarchaeological field techniques but will also be involved in all aspects of inquiry, including sample preparation, chemical and geospatial analysis.
