This project examines changes in the tangible markers of Yemen's mobile herders during ancient times and the role that profound changes in the natural and political environments played in the onset of strong tribe-based societies and territories such as seen today. Despite widely varying definitions of a tribe, most scholars agree that tribal societies are marked by social bonds of kinship as the basis for political and territorial groups. The project will investigate the formation of these groups over a very long time span that only archaeology can provide, giving a unique and important baseline for modern geo-politics involving tribal societies in the Middle East. In order to understand ancient social identity, examination of material remains of kin-based social identity is crucial. Territories and changes in territorial geography over time provide the necessary manifestation of tribal dynamics. Previous research has established that territories in Southern Arabia were marked with distinctive cairns and monuments as symbols of tribal rights, rites, and routes. This group of investigators, with expertise in archaeology, geographic information science, and statistics, will map these ancient territories and changes in boundaries, correlating them to the chronology of environmental and political change in the region. The investigators will use high resolution satellite images to identify cairn locations and types in the region; they will field an archaeological team for several seasons in southern Yemen's remote highlands to locate and verify the cairns located on the images; and they will develop appropriate statistical methodology for estimating spatio-temporal distribution of cairns. This project highlights the collaborative efforts of Americans, French, and Yemeni scholars in this international scientific endeavor. It will train graduate students in interdisciplinary science, bridging the gaps that emerge with hyper-technical disciplinary focus, to foster a new generation of scholarship in the landscape of human social dynamics.
RESEARCH QUESTION: Do the external stimuli, environmental change, and the political activities of adjacent states account for the emergence of and changes in tribal social identities and behaviors, particularly in tribal expressions of territorial identity? PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS: Joy McCorriston, Prem Goel, Dorota Brzezinska, with research support from Jared Schuetter, Michael Harrower, Jihye Park, Matthew Senn, Tara Steimer, Kimberly Williams, 'Abdalaziz Bin 'Aqil, Jennifer Everhart, Catherine Heyne, Ministry of Culture, Yemen, Ministry of Heritage and Culture Oman, American Institute for Yemeni Studies and Canadian Nexen. If there is one stereotypical image of Arabia, it is the timeless tribesman with camel set against the sands, "boundless and bare." But how timeless are tribes? In many countries in recent news, e.g., Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, tribal relationships seem to trump state citizenship. But were strong tribes always typical of Middle Eastern societies? The integrated tools of archaeology and statistical analysis of satellite images suggest that tribes were not always present and give us a window into long-term tribal dynamics, otherwise invisible to the modern observer. As a social mechanism for group solidarity based on ancestral ties, tribes have a beginning, and the strength of tribal expression seems to wax and wane with major climate shifts and state interventions. In four archaeological fieldwork seasons in the southern Arabian highlands of Yemen and Oman, the Arabian Human Social Dynamics (AHSD) Project has discovered three phases during which people in antiquity built small-scale stone monuments. One of these phases marks the beginnings of tribes. Mobile populations in low densities constructed and used monuments in the Neolithic era (5000-4500 BC), Early Bronze Age (3100-1900 BC) and Iron Age (1000-300 AD)—with little or no evident activity in the intervals between these eras. Pastoralists chose to invest their labor in permanent stone monuments and burial cairns in the wilderness, not in houses and other settlement architecture. These investments signify the importance of monuments to maintaining pastoralists’ economic and social lives. The AHSD Project excavated thirty-six monuments, and the results of excavation show the first evidence for tribes around 3100 BC, when stone monuments were first used for burials. During the Neolithic era, people built platforms to commemorate sacrifices and feasts attended by large groups. A shift to burying Bronze Age ancestors in high circular tombs suggests that the maintenance of social networks after 3100 BC strongly depended on genealogical ties. This research has identified the first tribal social identities in the southern Arabian highlands. This period coincides with well-documented scientific climate reconstructions of a regional onset of aridity, suggesting that mobile pastoral peoples attached themselves to important resources through their links to the dead fixed in place. The team also pioneered computer-aided discovery of archaeological sites using remotely-sensed (satellite) images with an auto-detection algorithm, that is, a pattern detection method that determines whether an area of imagery contains a specified type of monument. The monuments are not randomly distributed; instead they cluster along the edges of plateaus and high terraces along major dry river beds and access routes. The team designed and tested an algorithm to detect high circular tombs, the burial monuments that mark tribal social groups. A GUI (General User Interface) has also been designed to make the algorithm and its use freely available to other scientists. As high-resolution satellite imagery becomes less expensive, the GUI and algorithm will make it possible to detect almost all high circular tombs in Arabia, so that the spatial distributions of ancient tribal societies can be better understood.
