DAHWA, OMAN—The Miami Herald reports that traces of a 5,000-year-old settlement have been unearthed in Oman’s northern Al Batinah Governorate by a team of Omani and American researchers. The settlement, built out of stone by the people of the Umm al-Nar culture, contained warehouses, administrative buildings, ritual buildings, and an industrial site for processing copper ore, explained archaeologist Nasser al-Jahuri. Jewelry, including a necklace of silver beads and a silver ring with an engraved bison seal, was found by Kimberly Williams of Temple University in a tomb that also held imported and locally made pottery and skeletal remains. Her colleague Dennys Frenez added that the ring could be linked to three additional cultures: the silver likely originated in Turkey, and may have been fashioned into a ring by a silversmith in Iraq, while the bison was a symbol used by the Harappan cultures of the Indus Valley, which is located in what are now Pakistan and India. To read about a game board unearthed at a 4,000-year-old site in the Qumayrah Valley, go to "Around the World: Oman."
