Funerary Pathways Marked by Burial Monuments in Arabian Desert Demystified

A series of pathways, flanked by ancient tombs, cutting through the deserts in the north-western part of the Arabian peninsula, have been a source of mystery until latest research managed to piece together the clues.

Archaeologists from the University of Western Australia (UWA), working in collaboration with the Royal Commission for AlUla (AlUla is a city in north-western Saudi Arabia) have discovered that people who lived in these parts in the Early to Middle Bronze Age built 'funerary avenues' &ndash long-distance corridors linking oases and pastures, bordered by thousands of elaborate burial monuments.

The findings were recently published in the Holocene journal (a high impact, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to fundamental scientific research).

Led by Dr Matthew Dalton (also lead author of the findings published in the journal) from UWA&rsquos School of Humanities, the team used satellite imagery, helicopter-based aerial photography, ground survey and excavation to locate and analyse the funerary avenues.

Dr Dalton said, &ldquoFunerary avenues were the major highway networks of their day, and show that the populations living in the Arabian Peninsula 4,500 years ago were far more socially and economically connected to one another than we previously thought.&rdquo

The team located avenues over an area of 160,000 square km, with more than 17,800 tailed 'pendant' tombs (also known as &lsquotailed cairns&rsquo or &lsquotailed tower tombs&rsquo) recorded in their primary study areas of AlUla and Khaybar in Saudi Arabia, of which around 11,000 formed part of funerary avenues.

&nbspAccording to the researchers, the highest concentrations of funerary monuments on these avenues were located near permanent water sources, with the direction of the avenues indicating that people used them to travel between major oases, including those of Khaybar, AlUla and Tayma. They also concluded that the lesser avenues fading into the landscapes surrounding oases were likely used to move herds of domestic animals into nearby pastures during periods of rain.

&ldquoThese oases, especially Khaybar, exhibit some of the densest concentrations of funerary monuments known worldwide,&rdquo Dr Dalton said.  &ldquoThe sheer number of Bronze Age tombs built around them suggests that populations had already begun to settle more permanently in these favourable locations at this time.&rdquo

Project Director Dr Hugh Thomas, also from UWA&rsquos School of Humanities, said the research caps a tremendous year for the project. He said, &ldquoThe papers published in 2021 have helped demonstrate that in ancient times AlUla and Khaybar were characterised by a rich and dynamic occupational landscape.&rdquo

According to a release from the Royal Commission for AlUla, this is the UWA team&rsquos fourth publication in less than a year in a peer-reviewed scientific journal on research at AlUla and Khaybar.

The earlier three being

Dating the pendant-shaped tombs of the Khaybar Oasis to the 3rd millennium BCE &ndash the first published radiocarbon evidence dating the tombs &ndash in the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy (August, 2021).

The monumental structures known as mustatils are much older than previously believed, dating as far back as 5,200 BCE, and appear to have had a ritual function in the journal Antiquity (April 2021),

And, the discovery of the remains of the oldest known domesticated dog in Arabia, in the Journal of Field Archaeology (March 2021).