Copper-based implements of a newly identified culture in Yemen

Abstract

In March 1997 the excavation team of Edward Keall, Head of the Department of Near Eastern and Asian Civilization of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (Canada) found the remains of an apparently prehistoric site in a region that was supposed to have been uninhabited until the Middle Ages. On the site there are megalithic pillars of granite and basalt, weighing around 6 tons; some were part of what looks like a rectangular building. A cache of copper-based objects – consisting of two adzes, two daggers, four points, two razors and a leaf-shaped object – was found under one of the fallen megaliths. The authors present the as yet unpublished results of the chemical analysis carried out by ICP and the observations obtained by SEM/EDX and discuss briefly the significance of the data and the problems encountered while studying the items of the newly discovered civilization. The stylistic comparisons and the chemical composition of the objects suggest a date around the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, while other finds on the site seem to indicate a later period.