Page 228 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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same sites and people were buried in the same cemeteries. Throughout the first
millennium B.C., the islands maintained their position as an entrepot for Arabia
and continued to maintain a prominent land use base.

Like the Barbar period, the last half of the first millennium B.C. seems
to have been a time of greater winter rainfall. Thus, a natural environmental
episode provided more favorable conditions for both agriculture and population
growth. The slightly increased period of rainfall suggested by the data ended by the
middle of the first millennium A.D., when Bahrain again dropped from prominence.

First Millennium A.D.

A general lack of detailed archeological knowledge of this period hampers critical
discussion, but Bahrain may have been subjected to environmental stresses that
curtailed major agricultural development. This period is suggested as one of
n
aridity not only in the geological data presented here, but also by Tabari (Nddecke
1879), who reported that tribes from eastern Arabia were driven to desperation by
drought and famine during the fourth century and, as a result, raided the coasts of
Sasanian Persia. The historic records point to a maritime trade network in the gulf
at the time, but the effects of this do not appear in Bahrain's land use patterns. In
the fifth century A.D. Bahrain came under increased Sasanian influence. It is
possible that new irrigation techniques such as qanats were introduced during this
period of Sasanian influence, but the spatial distribution of the minimal ceramic
evidence points again to diminished land use.

TTie Islamic Period

Ttie Early Islamic occupation in the last half of the first millennium A.D. was
approximately equal to that of the preceding Achaemenid-Seleucid-Parthian
occupation. In terms of the optimum population curve, the Early Islamic period fell
below the population and agricultural area anticipated by a 0.05 percent