Page 199 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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A more reliable record of dated Holocene terraces is given by Felber et
aL (1978:50-58) for the Saudi Arabian coast. Well-developed abrasion terraces exist
near al-Jubayl and the nearby coastal area, where they occur 2-3 meters higher
than the modern sea level. Radiocarbon dates from shells associated with these
terraces are 4670 + 190 B.P., 3380 + 180 B.P., and 3990 + 90 B.P., while a younger
date of 1090 + 80 B.P. was obtained from surface deposits of oyster shell covering
dunes in the coastal region—an uncertain geological context. Al-Asfour (1978)
presents a similar date for one of her tectonically deformed terraces at Kuwait,
where shell deposits at ca. 5 m above sea level were dated to 940 + 80 B.P., but
there is no clear relationship between them.
Additional geological information from the Arabian coast has been
reported by Ridley and Seeley (1979) to demonstrate mid Holocene tectonic
movements along the Bahrain ridge. These writers studied raised beach features 2.8
m above sea level near al-Jubail and dated the incorporated fossil shells to 3785 +
145 B.P. Woven into their presentation and clearly related to the problem of
relative sea level changes were Bibby's 'Ubaid sites located at elevations of 4-5 m
above sea level (Bibby 1969, 1971, 1973). These sites, dated between 6000 and 6500
B.P., showed evidence of barnacle encrustations on ’Ubaid pottery. While Ridley
and Seeley used these landforms to argue for uplift on the magnitude of 1.5 m since
’Ubaid times (now disputed by McClure and Vita-Finzi 1982), they clearly identified
two dated and well-defined terrace and beach ridge sequences. The earlier,
contemporary with or subsequent to 'Ubaid settlement sites, was 4-5 m above sea
level. A later terrace at 2.8 m related to altitudinally and temporally similar
landforms reported from Kuwait to the Trucial Coast.
These same terraces have subsequently been described from Bahrain in
Doornkamp, Brunsden, and Jones (1980:316-327), who have described a strongly
defined beach ridge on the east coast of Bahrain near Ras Hayyan at 4.5-4.6 m
above the Admiralty sea level datum. Radiocarbon dates obtained from the inner
carbonate in Cerithid gastropods and various bivalves were 6670 + 120 B.P. and
6940 + 160 B.P. A lower series of beach ridges were found 2-3 m above the sea