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1983), are all of indigenous Dilmun type. The absence of foreign resources in the tombs is
notable. Only a very few lapis lazuli (less than a dozen), and agate beads were recovered.
Similarly only 7 burials of hundreds excavated by Ibrahim (1983) contained steatite
vessels. 'Hicsc vessels were all of the type designated by de Miroschcdji (1973) as “Scric
Recente” having the characteristic” dot-and-circle” motif at Susa, Yahya, Oman, and Abu
Dhabi. Exceptional for its being a “foreign” object is a single etched carnclian discoid bead
from tomb S-267.3 — long regarded as an Indus type artifact (During Caspers 1972).

In 1977 the author had the good fortune to excavate a tumulus burial south of the
Dhahran airport in Saudi Arabia from which an etched carnclian bead was also recovered.
Over 1500 tumuli litter the landscape here. The excavation of this mainland tumulus
mound (208-95) is architecturally similar to Ibrahim’s S-100 (Type I). (Potts, et. al.
1978 : 9)

It is of interest to point out two “Persian Gulf’ seals recently recovered from burial
mounds by Ibrahim (1983 Fig. 50:4-5). Both seals arc of “glazed steatite” and depict
stylized bulls. The “glazing” of steatite seals to produce a white surface “glaze” (probably
produced by heat treatment) is characteristic of both Akkadian and Indus seals; the period
of maximum Indus-Mesopotamian contact (Lambcrg-Karlovsky 1972). Additionally, the
contouring of the bull’s neck with a series of concentric rings isprecisely like that of the bulls
on Indus seals (see for example Marshall 1931: Vol. Ill PI. 107: 109, 118, 123, 126, 139
etc.)

In addition to the above Bibby (1954) recorded the recovery of ivory artifacts and
numerous ostrich shell-cups; the former an import, the latter, most likely, a locally
available commodity. The thirteen burial mounds from which Ibrahim (1983) recovered
copper/bronzc artifacts do nothing to eliminate the generalization that the tombs contained
limited wealth and very few foreign resources.

Discussion

Tainter (1978:106-7) has confidently stated that Binford’s (1971) ethnographic cross-
cultural survey of burial practices con firms “beyond serious contention the argument (still
rated sceptically by some) that variability in mortuary practices must be understood in
terms of variability in the form and organization of social systems, not in terms of normative
models of behavior.” More recently, Hodder (1982:195-98) has emphatically stated that
there is every reason to be sceptical of the social reconstructions of cemetery evidence.
Hodder concludes:

“.... that many aspects of social organization ... are not expressed in
burial, whereas some aspects are but that what is represented
depends on attitudes to death structurally related to attitudes in life.
Because of the dominant role of these attitudes, the aspects of societal
organization which are represented in burial may be ideals picked out
from practical social relations or even in contrast to them, reverting and
distorting.”

Where does this leave us in attempting to understand the largest prehistoric cemetery
known in the Old World? Clearly the detailed presentation of the data, as begun by Ibrahim
(1983), is obligatory. The analysis of the Bahrain burials according to regional patterning,
within-cemetery patterning, and within-grave patterning still awaits a detailed final publi­
cation. It is abundantly clear, however, from the burgeoning literature on these Bahrain
burials that the accumulation of facts alone do not provide an understanding or a meaning

of their significance.

Thus, how are we to explain the fact that Dilmun, which Sumerian myth relates from the
beginning of time was given fresh water and made a flourishing emporium by Enki for his
consort Ninhursag, where Enki placed Ninsikil, “ the pure lady” and Enshag the fair lord to
reign, and which Sumerian literature pictures as a “paradise,” contains a cemetery which is as

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