Page 62 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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Obviously, Telmun has lost contact with the mining
centers of Makkan and with these regions which supplied it
with stone and timber, etc. Some time between the fall of the
Dynasty of Larsa and the decline of power of the Hammurabi
Dynasty, it turned again into an island famous only for its
agricultural products, its sweet water, etc. Copper, precious
stones, and rare woods had now to come to southern
Mesopotamia either over the mountain ranges or from the
west along the river routes.[Oppenheim 1954:15]

Bibby (1971) has characterized the weight of the historic data on the
Dilmun problem by suggesting that the merchants of Ur were a highly pragmatic
group concerned with a return on their investments. They were not sending their
capital on voyages to a mystical land beyond the edge of the known world. Dilmun
was a reality (Bibby 1971:147).
This interpretation should be seen as part of a larger pattern. For
example, Oppenheim suggested that the frequency and intensity of direct contacts
by sea between Mesopotamia and Meluhha had reached a peak during the Akkadian
period. He felt that the maritime trade of the Ur III and Isin-Larsa dynasties was
only a second stage of development concomitant with the wane of maritime trade
expansion from the East. By the close of the third millennium, Dilmun was far
from being a mythical land. On the contrary, it had become a cultural center
which made use of its geographic position and port facilities to bind together the
extremities of a shrinking and fragmented trading system.
Perhaps it is not surprising to find that the ceramic indicators of third
millennium Bahrain in Appendix I parallel gulf trade. The ceramic sequence at
Qala'at al-Bahrain gives no firm indication of being earlier than Akkadian or late
Early Dynastic HI. This applies to the record of third-millennium surface
collections as well. We are hard-pressed to recognize evidence of early third
millennium occupations even though these may have occurred on some part of the
island. A single Jemdet Nasr sherd from Temple I at Barbar is thus far the only
clue to this possibility. The ceramic evidence indicates the following pattern:

i