Page 37 - DILMUN 8

‫ﻻﻟ‬iadiS‫ﻻ‬tesaand nltebryniniaSauiri A
Srface fnds ush back the rehistory
of Saudi Arabia a thousandyears.
By GRACE BURKHODER
ne of the major leasures of living in
()‫ﻳﻦ‬i‫ ﻳﺘﺘﺎ ﺗﺘﺘﺖ‬i«‫ ﻡ‬y e
is so little known; if you have, .as we do,
a enchnat for acrhaoelgoy and a tsate for ad
evntuer and. rtavel, tihs is an ecellent lace.
You have at your doosrte an raid eanse of
800,000 s‫ﻭ‬uare milse which on most archaeo
lgoiacl mas is either left blank or dseimgated
simly Te arAbian Dseetr.' g‫ﻥ‬ute a feat of
ocmsserion-and oimssion. But theer is a rea
osn for htsi, hte simle fact ebing htat, archae
oligoaclly seikan,g mlaost no detailed knowledge
of raely Saudi Arabia is to eb had.
Ma‫ ﻅ‬baed on a drwaing by
Dr. Rowland Illiek, College
of eroleum and Minersla,
Dahran, Saudi Arabia.
IRAN
We have undertaken to hel ٩ll this void, and
our efforts have been suorted by the eanding
Deartment of Antiquitise. The 'we" consists of
myself and several friends who are as eager sa
I to see the search for antiquity go forward. Our
work hsa taken hte form of a land-surface survey
of the Easterm rovince, a search we have been
- conducting for nearly a decade, We have made
some eciting finds-and, in the most tentative
of ways, have begun to conjecture about the
culture that once flourished here.
In 1968 I was out scouting for ottery frag
menst in an area south of Jubail, a tonw on hte
Arabian Gulf, and while touring the windswet
salt Aast I came on a site (Site 1) that was acr
etde with debris. hTe otsherds I icked u
the suly wsa abundant-uazled me adn
aorsued my curiosity. In my yeasr of ot-icking,
I had come acorss a wealth of Islaimc attemrs
and Seleucid rims, matched sherds wiht materials
alerady ublished in Iraq, ran .and Eygt; but I
had seen nothing like thsee. I rwote to Geoffery
Bibby of the Dansih archaeoloiglac eedition
which wsa hten eamining sites in the esatemr
atr of the counyrt. He told ne that my ainted
framgenst weer of a tey acllde Ubaid, nad that
the culture they erserented wsa the earilset
knon in souhtenr Moseotaima before 4‫ﺝ‬00
٥.c. We etendde the arneg of hte Ubaid clu
tuer by nearly a thousand kilometesr, and in that
same single storke added a milleninmu to Saudi
Aarbi'as erhistoyr.