The Oman Peninsula during the Early and Mid-Second Millennium BC

Abstract

Abstract The recovery of the archaeological heritage of the Oman peninsula during the second millennium BC began during the Danish campaign of 1962-3 with the discovery of several objects of second-millennium date in reused Hafit-period graves in Buraimi. While surveying northern Ras al-Khaimah in February 1968, B. de Cardi and D. B. Doe encountered nineteen long-burials of a previously unknown type in an exensive area of ruins near the Shihuh village of Shimal. The finds made amidst the debris of one already robbed grave included a fragmentary incised steatite vase of a new type. In 1970-1 K. Frifelt excavated several second-millennium graves on Qarn Bint Sa’ud, north of Al Ain. It was her 1972 discovery and excavation of several graves in the Wadi Suq, above Sohar, and her surface collection at similar ones in the Wadi Sunaysl, near ‘Ibri, however, which were to prove particularly significant. The ceramics and steatite found in the plundered graves in the Wadi Suq constituted a selection of what has come to be considered typical of the second millennium.