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Dilnuin and Magan share the mortuary practice of constructing large sepulcher chambers.
'Hie types of tomb construction however differ, as does the fact that the tombs of Oilmun arc
single burials while those of Magan (Oman and Abu Dhabi) are true collective tombs (Frifclt
1976; Clcuziou 1977).

The differences between the collective burials of Magan and the single burials of Dilmun
allow us to suggest a number of hypotheses. Though burial behavior may distort and invert, as
it masks the wealth of Dilmunites seen in their minimal grave goods, it does not totally hide.
Cemeteries may be territorially organized and bounded or they may be scattered and diffuse.
The cemeteries of Bahrain (Dilmun) and those from Abu Dhabi to Oman (Magan) arc
territorially bounded, located in proximity to settlements. It has been suggested by Saxe
(1970) and more fully reiterated by Goldstein (1976) that bounded cemeteries arc consis­
tently associated with corporate groups characterized by lineal descent. The corporate group’s
communal rights over restricted resources (land) arc maintained by links with their common
ancestors.

We further suggest that the differences between the collective burials of Magan and the
single burials of Dilmun reflect a differential cohesiveness of the corporate groups and a
concomitant difference in the cultural complexity that characterized both areas. Thus, the
collective burials represent a tighter bond within the corporate groups: communal tombs
containing families, clans, etc. Recently at Hili, in Abu Dhabi, Cleuzioui has excavated a single
tomb containing at least 100 burials (personal communication). The individual tombs of
Dilmun represent a breakdown of earlier close kin groupings. These differences reflect, in
turn, different patterns of economic organization. The individual tombs of Dilmun reflect not
only a breakdown of corporate kin groupings but an increase in social stratification where
personal status is achieved rather than as in Magan ascribed through kin alignments and
corporate ownership of kin lands.

Let us turn now to the relative absence of weath in the tumuli of Bahrain. The placing of
luxury items in a burial is tantamount to the removal of capital from circulating within a
society. The removal of capital from circulation provides a continuing incentive for the
production of more commodities in order to replace those lost through internment with the
dead. The internment of luxury commodities serves the dual purpose of symbolically enhanc­
ing the status and rank of the deceased family as well as stimulating the need for continuous
production. Thus a pre-industrial rank-society involved with production (Sumerian Ur) differs
from a pre-industrial rank-society involved with commerce (Dilmun). A pre-industrial society
involved with commerce, particularly of unfinished products, is ill-served by the elimination of
goods by burial. In a dominantly commercial society, involved in the transshipment of
unfinished goods, both rank-status and profits are manifest in the circulation of goods not in
their elimination by burial. Capital and status are developed on Dilmun not through cyclical
production of elite goods and their deposition in human burials but through success in
commerce and the continual circulation of goods. The absence of elite goods on Bahrain
becomes more comprehensible with such an interpretation. One may now fairly ask how status
and wealth on Bahrain, in the absence of elite goods in burials, is shown. I would answer this by
suggesting the notion that success in commerce brings both profit and wealth. Wealth is, in
turn, evident in the burials not through the disposal of capital, that is in the material remains
deposited in the tombs, but in the costs of labor-value in constructing the tombs. The status
and wealth, the tangible evidence of one’s success in commerce and/or agricultural production
on Bahrain, is evident in the differential labor costs in the construction of tombs. It has long
been known that the tombs on Bahrain vary greatly in size and complexity. The large tumuli
mounds of Ali “are stupendous, the least of them as high as a three story building” (Bibby

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