Page 136 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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coast only a few kilometers to the west. This may indicate that Bahrain was not
fully included in the exchange network until Akkadian times, even though a gulf
maritime trade network was in operation.
A final problem does not involve the external trade model, but rather our
concept of hierarchically arranged village patterns, The modern
population-distance relationship shown in Figure 2 plainly exhibits an expected
decrease in population away from the urban center of Manama. The rank-size
distribution in Figure 13 displays a similar relationship where the population of the
second tier of settlements, those villages from through Pg, closely related to
Manama. These village hierarchies seem straightforward and reflect upon the
existing theories of central-place development as related to market economies and
effort minimization. Figures 20a and 20b, however, bring to light the dominant
factor for settlement and spatial studies of Bahrain. Figure 20a records the
number of villages on the main island with respect to the distance from Manama.
As anticipated, the greatest number of modern villages is found within 5 km of the
city, a reflection of population distribution. Figure 20b, on the other hand,
examines the spatial arrangement of artesian springs on the island. When viewed
as a function of distance from Manama, a correspondence is noted between the
number of springs and the number of villages. Heretofore, this portion of the
island has been considered as only the most profusely watered area, The
arrangement of villages (as well as the evolution of the village hierarchy) is clearly
biased by natural factors. This correspondence downplays the role of the market
center as the dominant variable in the arrangement of villages and suggests that
Bahrain!s trading center may have developed from a preexisting concentration of
semidifferentia ted villages located near artesian springs.