PI Joy McCorriston and Abigail Buffington presented two papers on ASOM research at the Seminar for Arabian Studies, this year in Leiden (the Netherlands). McCorriston presented a paper on monuments in Dhufar with an emphasis on boat-shaped graves the team excavated at D114 this past field season. Buffington presented the results of the settlement survey along with preliminary spatial analysis. Additionally, team member Joe Roe presented survey results from his latest field season in eastern Jordan.

Molen de Valk windmill in the center of Leiden

Annalee Sekulic recently traveled to Pennsylvania State University where she met with (now Professor) Sarah Ivory. The goal of the work weekend was to begin disaggregation of the Hyrax middens collected during the February 2018 and Autumn 2018 field seasons. She sorted, sized, and smelled a new step of the process which will assist her in producing her comparative macrobotanical data set. Sarah coached and mentored Annalee with her undergraduate senior

thesis and post-graduation options!

Annalee disaggregating in the Geosciences lab Penn State

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.

#insidenatgeo

We all got very interested in termite mounds again this season. While a draft article using data from Abby, Kyle, and Konstantin’s studies is circulating, we probed more mounds. Konstantin elected to trench and sample seven mounds, including some at D150 and a lone mound at the northern edge of the plateau. Here our hard-working Bengali helpers are at it yet again—we couldn’t do the project without them! We observed that there is a belt of termite mounds (marking formerly forested areas) that seems to correlate negatively with areas where exclosures and settlements are most dense. Can it be that the grasslands in the escarpment were more fully developed earlier?

excavating a termite mound at Mthbon

One of the enduring challenges has been the chronology of these monuments, few of which have ever been examined by archaeologists. Are all these monuments the same age? With Dr. Kimberly Williams, Joy McCorriston and four Omani students excavated two graves at D114. We noted that these tombs do not always contain much (or any?) human bone and that they seem to favor the flat surfaces of abandoned corrals for their placement. Stay tuned for the dates.

Shamma al Khamis excavating a Boat-Shaped Grave

Four students from the Master’s program at Sultan Qaboos University (Department of History) joined the field team. They flew from Muscat, put in long days excavating, and toured our newly recorded rock art sites. We worked hard through the evenings but had great fun too. With a blended celebration, we enjoyed the hospitality of ‘Abdalrahman’s family and American Thanksgiving. Grilled goat, mashed potatoes, and Bengali curry. Then…back to work!

The ASOM team on the porch of the work station!

A team of five researchers from the Oman Botanic Garden, led by Director Annette Patzelt, as well as Edinburgh Botanic Garden’s Tony Miller, joined us in Dhufar this year! Annette and Saif al-Hatmi led the botanical surveys in the plateau, near escarpment and along the wadis. The results of this research will aid in the ASOM objectives by providing clarification on the modern ecological communities and how these plant associations relate to the paleoecology proxy archives collected from the hyrax middens and termite mound paleosols.

Annalee and Joy participating in the identification of seeds collected on the survey with Annette and Tony.

ASOM graduate research associate, Abigail Buffington, has been awarded a National Geographic Society Early Career grant for the Fall 2018 ASOM field season. Her grant proposal emphasized the field objectives of documenting the spatial and chronological dimensions of settlement history in Dhufar. Buffington and co-director, Kyle Olson, will be conducting a survey and small-scale excavation.

@insidenatgeo