This fall, the ASOM team returned to Oman for another field season focused on survey and excavation of the plateau and escarpment regions surrounding and within the upper drainage of the eastern Wadi Darbat. During October, Abigail Buffington, Kyle Olson, and Joesph Roe conducted a systematic randomized survey of the plateau west of Jibjat and conducted targeted survey of remotely sensed locations in the escarpment surrounding the towns of Halqut and Yur. Multiple additional team members joined our small core team on a few days. Ali Ahmed Al Kathiri, the ASOM project’s representative from the Dhofar office of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, provided our team with wonderful insight into the terrain, environment, and landscape history, as well as aiding our hypothesis generation for settlement chronologies and structure function.
Plateau site in the foreground with camels and Acacia on the horizon.
Following this survey season in November, Annalee Sekulic joined Abby, Kyle, and Joe to form the excavation team, and we excavated a small number of the 50 new surveyed sites. Our team successfully trenched some of the structures at a very large settlement site, Mthbon, to the east of Halqut, as well as a meaningful sample of structures at two smaller sites in the survey region.
Abby and Ali stringing a trench at Mthbon
This component of the field research was generously supported by the National Geographic Society’s Early Career grant and the Penn Museum.
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