Abstract
A comparative study of peralkaline obsidian sources of Pantelleria, Turkey, Yemen, Ethiopia and Tibesti has been carried out. Attempts have been made to establish the provenance of Neolithic and Bronze Age obsidian artifacts from The Yemen Arab Republic (Jabal Qufrân, Sirwâh, Miswah, Najid al-Abyadh, Wsdî Yanâ'im, Yalâ and the coastal plain of Tihâmah), from the Saudi Tihâmah, the FarasSn Islands, the Koka Lake shore (Shoa, Ethiopia) and the Tibesti Massif. Finally, the origin of the obsidian of a statuette from a Tell al-'Amârnah tomb (18th dynasty) has been investigated. The hypothesis'proposed by archaeologists, that might have been some obsidian trade across the Red Sea in Neolithic times, is supported : the majority of the obdidian artifacts found in coastal archaeological sites of the Yemeni and Saudi Tihimah, as well as on the Farasân islands and in the Yemeni highland does not originate from the well-known great Yemeni obsidian sources. The provenance of the raw material of the Tell al-'Amârnah statuette remains unknown. Overlap in chemistry of peralkaline volcanic provinces - even those distant from each other - is considerable and causes uncertainty in provenance studies.
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