Page 122 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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A similar peak in land use occurred during the Barbar period in the third
millennium B.C. Qala’at al-Bahrain probably fulfilled the role as market center at
this time. Sickle blades found near Barbar sites along the southwest coast suggest
that grains were possibly cultivated in that area at this time, A convenient
extrapolation for the Barbar period takes the agricultural patterns for the Islamic
periods and includes among them additional and more extensive cultivation of
cereal crops. As in the Islamic periods as well as the present, herding probably
went on still farther to the south and along the slopes of the central dome. By far
the best evidence for pastoralism at this, the von TTiunen location, was recovered
from Roaf’s (1976) Late ’Ubaid site where sheep and goat remains are found. Here
however, there is no known Late ’Ubaid market center to complete the model.
Hie subordinate peak in land use which began during the first millennium
B.C. and continued into the first centuries A.D. may be viewed as a reduced
version of both the Barbar and Islamic period land use with dates, fruits, and
vegetables as the main market crops and with only the northern cluster of
settlements active to a signficant degree. TTie intervening periods of low land use
in the early third millennium, the second millennium, and the first millennium A.D.
are not easily explained through these models. For at least the latter two cases a
probable urban market center existed at Qala’at al-Bahrain. Yet, the recognized
archeological settlement data can only imply a minimum use of the available land.
It is difficult to propose well-defined areas of intensive versus extensive
cultivation, or pastoralism for these time periods. If zones of distinct land use
existed, they were of an intensive type devoted only to dates, vegetables, and
fruits cash crops.

Land Use and Cost Minimization

TTie von TTiinen model, as well as the historic overview for Bahrain, specify the
presence of a market center for the islands. The model makes it clear that the
hypothetical zones of land use are dependent upon cost minimization strategies
linking agrarian areas with a central market. This concept reasonably deserves a