Page 52 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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comment on the depositional environments in Qatar, similar materials are found in
surface sites above extinct lake beds in eastern Arabia, To date, there is no
recorded evidence of the Group B assemblage on Bahrain.
TTie third category is a scraper assemblage. This is Group C. There is, as
yet, no certain dating of these sites. The scraper assemblage may represent task-
specific sites related to either Group B or the more common Group D. Suffice to
say that this group is difficult to recognize from small surface collections and
requires a detailed quantitative study before it can be ascribed with certainty to
Bahrain. Healy, working with Roaf (1976), has recently noted some similarity to it
in the Group D flint materials from al-Markh, (site 167) in a Neolithic context.
The final group, Kapel's Group D, is the most common and generally the
most easily recognized. Its diagnostic artifact is a pressure-flaked, tanged, and
barbed projectile point between 2 and 4 cm in length. These are frequently
manufactured from a thin tabular flint formed as mineralized crack fillings in local
sedimentary rocks. Masry (1974) has given this group of flint artifacts the best
definition and has shown Group D to be the immediate prepottery Neolithic
assemblage of eastern Arabia. His most informative stratigraphic sequence is from
the site of ’Ain Qannas. Here, Masry excavated several levels of prepottery Group
D artifacts dated from 7060 + 445 B.P. to 6655 + 320 B.P. Similar lithic artifacts
continued throughout the sequence but were found to be contemporary with ’Ubaid
2 or Hajji Mohammed pottery in the upper four levels.
Tanged and barbed projectile points are also found with ’Ubaid pottery at
the Arabian coastal sites of Dosariyah and Abu Khamis. The former site has been
dated by C14 between 6900 + 330 B.P. and 4185 + 120 B.P. Abu Khamis dates from
5750 + 65 B.P. to 5660 + 250 B.P. Group D and the east Arabian ’Ubaid sites are
found associated with extinct river and lake systems as well as coastal marshes. A
lacustrine-maritime subsistence pattern is indicated by Masry*s data, 'Ubaid
pottery, obsidian blades, and carnelian beads point to distant trade influences with
Mesopotamia and perhaps elsewhere.
While only a few surface collections from Bahrain’s flint sites have been
reported upon, there appears to be a close agreement with coasted Saudi Arabia.