Page 63 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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Pre-Barbar (late Early Dynastic HI and Akkadian): Contact with
Mesopotamia, eastern Arabia, Umm an-Nar, Oman, and possibly with Tepe Yahya
and Bampur.
Barbar I (Ur HI): Similar to pre-Barbar with strong contacts among
Mesopotamia, eastern Arabia, Umm an-Nar, Oman and possibly with Tepe Yahya
and Bampur. A new element may indicate Indus Valley connections with Ranjapur.
Barbar n (Isin-Larsa): Strong indications of a coherent regional
identification, and limited contact with Mesopotamia, Oman, and the Indus Valley.
Umm an-Nar pottery is no longer abundant and new elements appear including
Persian Gulf seals, Indus Valley weights, as well as different pottery forms.
Oppenheim's case for southern Mesopotamia, as based on textual data, shows:
Akkadian: Ships to Meluhha, Magan, and Dilmun with possible direct
contact with Meluhha. Meluhha would seem to be emphasized.
Ur III: Magan is the important region with references to Dilmun rather
rare. Meluhha is outside the contact area by the end of this period.
Isin-Larsa: Dilmun replaces Magan in the eastern trade scheme. Texts
from Ur describe Dilmun as a port of trade. Contact appears to have been between
Dilmun and Mesopotamia.
In each of these cases, a major change occurred with the onset of both the
Barbar n and the Isin-Larsa periods. Bahrain gained a regional identity at this time
while historical contact between Magan and Meluhha with Mesopotamia was lost.
On the other hand, there does not appear to have been a major break in regional
contact. The archeological association of Mesopotamia with Bahrain, Oman, and
the Indus Valley seemed to continue, but ceramic resemblances were diminished.
By inference, regional contacts may not have been broken, as is indicated by the
textual references (Oppenheim 1954). Rather, the discontinuities may represent
the changing political systems of the latter half of the third and the early second
millennia. The lack of abundant, well-defined, Mature and Late Harappan ceramic
forms on Bahrain points to other explanations for Meluhha-Bahrain contacts in this
temporal framework.