Page 123 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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separate treatise, but amplification is not warranted here. Yet, certain main
points should be addressed as key factors in understanding the land use changes
that occurred during the past several thousand years. For example, we wish to
understand why Bahrain experienced such clearly defined changes. The first
explanatory clues come from historic sources.
Three of the four peak periods of land use shown on Figure 16 coincide
with documented, comtemporary, long-distance, maritime trade networks linking
the Arabian Gulf with India and/or the Far East. A fourth period of external
contact with Mesopotamia was suggested for the 'Ubaid period by Oates (Oates
1975, and Oates et al. 1977). Working from present to past, the major expansion of
land use on Bahrain occurred during the height of an organized maritime trade
network centered at Hormuz between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries which
continued under subsequent Safavid Persian control. Settlement on Bahrain
extended as far as 35 km south of the contemporary port city of Manama at this
time. The second peak in land use corresponds with the various competing trade
networks that existed beginning with the first millennium B.C. when Assyria under
Assurbanipal maintained trade links with India and while Bahrain was marketing
exotic goods from other regions. Finally, this greater use of the land coincided
with the Achaemenid through Parthian period when Gerrha competed with the
Seleucid Empire for control of Gulf trade.
Tbe Barbar period land-use peak of the late third millennium and early
second millennium B.C. developed during the direct maritime trade contact
between the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilization.
TTiis network was taken over and maintained by Dilmun during the Ur III through
Isin-Larsa dynasties in Mesopotamia. BahrainTs land use reached a peak during the
Isin-Larsa dynasties at the beginning of the second millennium B.C. Finally, Joan
Oates (1975) sees TJbaid period contact along the Arabian coast to have linked both
eastern Arabia and Bahrain with Ur. Tbe earliest expansion in land use corresponds
with this suggested early maritime contact. Thus, the most obvious explanation of
such land use fluctuations seems to be related to an external trade network
utilizing Bahrain as an entrepot for the Arabian Peninsula.