The Archaeology of North Arabia: Oases and Landscapes provides us with
the proceedings of the namesake international congress organised at the
University of Vienna. Its rich list of contributions both on recent
results of field activities and new considerations on different
settlement patterns and historical and cultural processes within North
Arabia makes this volume a state-of-the-art account of the multiple
scholarly pursuits in the region. The innovative topics are connected
both to field research and interpretative anthropological approaches:
from the oasis formation paradigm, the debate on crops, on local types
of agriculture and water management systems in different desert and
oases landscapes, and on the date of appearance of date palm
cultivation, to funerary and ceremonial landscapes in their transition
and transformation from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze and Iron Ages;
from the ground-breaking presence of Syro-Levantine metal weapons in
early second millennium BCE graveyards of the Northern Hejaz, the
phenomenon of large-scale diffusion of oases-produced pottery wares, the
attestation of chariots on rock art, and the challenges of modern-day
archaeology and cultural resource management, down to the concept of
environmental differentiation and identity, between mobility and
connectivity. New data and the multi- and transdisciplinary methodology
espoused by the volume dramatically change our understanding of the
social and cultural development, especially of social complexity, of an
area often neglected in scholarly studies in the past. These
proceedings, therefore, contribute substantially in positioning the
archaeology of North Arabia into the broader perspective of the
archaeology of the Ancient Near East, from the Neolithic to the
pre-Islamic period and will hopefully become a standard work for
understanding the Arabian Peninsula for years to come.
