Bronze Age Settlement Excavated in Saudi Arabia

AL-‘ULA, SAUDI ARABIA—Live Science reports that a 4,400-year-old settlement site has been discovered in western Saudi Arabia by a team of researchers led by Guillaume Charloux of the French National Center for Scientific Research. The settlement was made up of a central district, a residential district, and protective ramparts measuring about nine miles long. Such Bronze Age settlements in Saudi Arabia tended to be smaller than those found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Charloux said. “These were small towns connected to networks of monumental ramparts surrounding the large local oases,” he explained. This small town, dubbed al-Natah, is estimated to have been home to about 500 people beginning around 2400 B.C. In the residential area of the settlement, the excavation uncovered pottery and grinding stones among at least 50 dwellings made of earthen materials. Trace evidence of cereal crops was detected. Two buildings that may have been used as administrative areas were uncovered in the center of the town, and a necropolis with tall, circular tombs was identified to the west. Charloux and his colleagues have not yet determined why al-Natah was abandoned between 1500 and 1300 B.C. “While urbanization began in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the fourth millennium B.C., our study tends to show that social complexity increased late in north-western Arabia,” he concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in PLOS ONE. To read about 7,000-year-old stone structures identified among Saudi Arabia's now-inactive lava mounds, go to "Hot Property."