Page 73 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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While this proposal is provocative, certain hard data have been
overlooked. For example, Lamberg-Karlovsky was influenced by public lectures
given by Moawiyah Ibrahim prior to completion of his 1982 analysis of the Bahrain
material. Thus, he mistakenly considered multiple-burial tombs to be the rule
rather than the exception. As discussed earlier, a full 78 percent of the surface
tombs excavated by Ibrahim were individual burials. In addition, certain tombs
were found to be empty while others contained fractional” or incomplete skeletal
material. Photographs and drawings presented by Ibrahim (1982), however, clearly
show the primary nature of various interments. Where skeletal material was
disturbed, ostensibly during robbery, the remaining parts could be associated with
the common flexed burial position. Thus, it appears that the majority of late third
millennium tombs on Bahrain are individual, primary burials.
Lamberg-Karlovsky’s proposal notwithstanding, contemporary settlement
and population are the best candidates to explain the densely clustered third
millennium tombs of Bahrain. Discrete clusters associated with verified Barbar
period settlements clearly argue for this explanation, as does the preponderance of
primary burials. In light of these data, we can estimate that Bahrain-Dilmun had
an urban center with as many as 7000 to 8000 inhabitants during the Barbar II phase
(2000-1800 B.C.). Considering that such an average cannot address the maximum or
minimum populations of the period, the total population at its peak may well have
exceeded 20,000.
With full awareness of the potential error in these approaches, it is
possible to gain a relative degree of knowledge about Bahrain that has heretofore
been ignored. Future, more sophisticated paleodemographic studies patterned on
those of Hall (1978), Hassan (1978), and Weiss (1973) may eventually be derived from
a complete analysis of the skeletal material from the many Barbar period tombs.

Later Dilmun and Tylos
Tlie use of Dilmun as a place name encompassed a time period bounded by its first
historic mention in mid third millennium Mesopotamia until the name fell from use
after the collapse of the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nabonidus (ca.