Page 105 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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the Kassite burials are found about two kilometers inland. The scarcity of Kassite
period archeological evidence is curious considering the well-known textual
evidence connecting Kassite Mesopotamia with Dilmun at this time. From this
correspondence (Cornwall 1952) we know that Dilmun supplied dates to
Mesopotamia and that the Kassite centers (on the mainland?) were plagued by raids
from nomads. There also appears to have been no trade in luxury goods as there
was during the previous millennium. Rather, agricultural products were supplied to
the very area which a few centuries earlier had been exporting grain and finished
goods in return for copper and diorite. A different economic pattern was clearly
evident.
The two Kassite occupation sites on the north coast of Bahrain provide
little evidence upon which to base even a simplistic land use model. The trade in
dates may have utilized only the prolific and intensely cultivated date gardens of
this portion of the island. Thus, the lack of Kassite ceramic evidence may indicate
a decline in agricultural land use and a related concentration of activity in only the
most productive garden areas. Therefore, the Kassite period on Bahrain was
clearly not one of major economic expansion, but one of conservatism when
settlement shrank to a minimum.
It was not until the first millennium B.C. that a noticeable change
occurred in the array of occupation sites. While significant, it hardly duplicated
the extent of Barbar period settlement. Ceramic collections from the
Neo-Assyrian through Seleuco-Parthian levels at QalaTat al-Bahrain allow the
identification of six settlements and several burials (fig. 12). Although the number
of these sites is not great, the lateral extent surpasses the area occupied during the
preceding Kassite period. The greatest extension of settlement during the first
millennium B.C. occurred during the Neo-Assyrian to Achaemenid period as
evidenced by ceramics found at site 217 near the village of Ali. The evidence for
settlement is accompanied by the presence of Neo-Assyrian to Achaemenid burials
found below a nearby Early Islamic site (site 208). Thus, while only two
Neo-Assyrian to Achaemenid settlements are known on Bahrain, the spacing of
these sites, coupled with the location of several contemporary burials, suggests