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Bronze Age Town in Khaybar Oasis

Executive Summary

Recently the Khaybar Longue Durée Project (AFALULA, RCU, CNRS) has revealed the ruins of a large Bronze Age town, named al-Natah, in the Khaybar Oasis, which dates c. 4,400 to 3,300 years ago (c. 2400-1300 BCE). Divided into distinct functional areas – residential, administrative, and funerary – the town is associated, and contemporary with, a huge stone rampart fortification that encircles the core of the Khaybar Oasis.

Bronze Age Centre of Trade and Interactions

This discovery means that the picture of nomadic pastoralism being the dominant economic and social model of the region in the Bronze Age must be challenged. It also implies that oases such as Khaybar were carefully controlled and highly valued landscapes that, with the advent of agriculture, supported permanent populations and must have been dynamic centres for trade and interactions with the indigenous nomadic communities. 

These findings will be detailed in Charloux, G et al 2024, A Bronze Age town in the Khaybar walled oasis: debating early urbanization in Northwestern Arabia. To be published in the prestigious online science journal Plos One this month.

Overview

Recent archaeological work has discovered a fortified 2.6-hectares Bronze Age town (al-Natah) in Khaybar oasis (dating around 2400 BCE- 1300 BCE). 

For the first time in NW Arabia, the characteristics of a 3rd /2nd millennium-BCE settlement, subdivided into a residential area, administrative area and a necropolis, have been recorded.

This archaeological evidence confirms a major transition from seasonally mobile life to settled town life in the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. This radical change had a profound impact on socio-economic organization in the region.

While the region was largely dominated by pastoral mobile groups, already integrated into long-distance trade networks, Bronze Age NW Arabia was also dotted with interconnected, monumental walled oases centered around small fortified towns (such as Tayma, Qurayyah).

This nascent urbanism and increasing social complexity through the Early and Middle Bronze Ages challenges previous understanding of human occupation history of NW Arabia.

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Location

The al-Natah site is located in the Khaybar Oasis at the north of the al-Natah Plateau and overlooking the Wadi Suwayr.

The al-Natah settlement is associated with the inner rampart that encircles the core of the Oasis.

Khaybar is one of a number of defended oases dating from the Bronze Age through to the Iron Age in NW Arabia, of which Tayma and Qurrayyah are prominent.

al-Natah

The recent discovery of the al-Natah town site in Khaybar Oasis, significantly advances our understanding of the economic, political and social complexity of a sedentary settlement of NW Arabia around 4,000 years ago. The town, which had separate functional areas, appears to be associated with the huge defensive rampart that circled the core of the oasis, and may have controlled the landscape within.

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Importance

Elsewhere in the Middle East, and north in Turkey, permanent settlement of agricultural communities such as Çatalhöyük and Jericho date back earlier, to the Early Neolithic(8,500 to 10,000 years ago). Larger settlements, cities, were well established elsewhere in the Bronze Age (5,500 to 3,000 years ago), but this is the first clear example of a Bronze Age town-sized settlement with clearly differentiated activity areas in NW Arabia. 

This discovery means that the picture of seasonally mobile  pastoralism being the dominant economic and social model of the region in the Bronze Age must be challenged.

It also implies that oases were carefully controlled and highly valued landscapes that, with the advent of agriculture, supported permanent populations and must have been dynamic nodes for trade and interactions with the indigenous nomadic communities.



Next Steps

Charloux. G, et al 2024, A Bronze Age town in the Khaybar walled oasis: debating early urbanization in Northwestern Arabia.

To be published in the prestigious online science journal Plos One this month.

Leadership