Hoofdartikel the Other Side of Sheba: Early Towns In

5 THE OTHER SIDE OF SHEBA: EARLY TOWNS ON THE HIGHLANDS OF YEMEN 6

HOOFDARTIKEL could be invested in large scale irrigation systems, such as that found at Marib. These major public works, in turn, generated some of the food and fodder that could be used to sup- THE OTHER SIDE OF SHEBA: EARLY TOWNS IN ply the passing caravans. The scale of such dams and irriga- THE HIGHLANDS OF YEMEN*) tion systems was such that they required a massive labour force to maintain them (and to rebuild the dams when they T.J. WILKINSON burst). This could have resulted in episodic influxes of population which then resulted in a further increase in the size of In contrast to the arid interior of Arabia, the Yemen high- the towns and the field systems to both accommodate and lands are remarkably well watered and verdant. Despite these feed the additional labour pool. Therefore as Alessandro de advantages, until the 1990s this vast area of mountains and Maigret has suggested, agricultural resources were funda- intermontane basins had largely escaped the attention of mental to the growth of the cities of southern Arabia, even archaeologists, because attention was primarily focussed though trade itself may have been the catalyst for that growth upon the desert fringe oases where a series of well popula- (de Maigret 1999). ted and opulent settlements developed along the incense route The above summarizes some of the basic components of linking Dhofar (Oman) to the Levant and the eastern Medi- what is known about the growth of south Arabian civiliza- terranean. For most Near Eastern archaeologists, southwest tion, but what is less clear is how this civilization was able Arabia remains rather problematic, in part because the civi- to develop so rapidly out of what seemed to have been a vir- lization of the Sabaeans, which developed in the early 1st tual demographic vacuum. For example, it has been sugge- millennium BC, occurred chronologically rather late. This sted that civic institutions, technical knowledge, and part of compares with, for example Dynastic Egypt, Canaan, and the population moved in to southern Arabia (like the script) Mesopotamia, that all saw their fluorescence in the later 4th from the Levant (Kitchen, 1994). This theory received some and 3rd millennia BC. Even Oman, located in relatively arid support from the absence of any pre-existing complex south east Arabia, is now known to have actively participa- society in the region. Thus ever since the early days of archa- ted in the “world system” of the third millennium BC. In eological exploration, southern Arabia was apparently wit- contrast, Yemen and adjacent parts of Arabia apparently hout a Bronze Age, and as recently as 1988 a well-informed stood aloof from these developments; that is, until the states article reported that in western and southern Arabia there along the fringe of the southern Arabian deserts grew dra- was a general gap in occupation between the Neolithic/ matically during the first millennium BC, mainly as a result Chalcolithic and the rise of the Sabaean civilization (Sauer of the growth in the incense trade. and Blakely 1988: 100). Thus western and southern Arabia The south Arabian cities of Saba, Qataban, Hadhramaut only become extensively populated again in the later Bronze and Ma{in are perhaps best known for three shared features: Age or early Iron Age (1300-1000 BC). This gap in the superb temples that flaunt well dressed masonry detailing; archaeological record, also makes it difficult to understand their fabulous riches which were well known to classical aut- the rapid rise of the Himyarite state which occurred in the horities such as Herodotus, Agatharchides, and Pliny the 1st century BC in what had been terra incognita in the moun- Elder (Groom 1981; Breton 1999), and the use of a geome- tainous hinterland of Saba (Fig. 1). One explanation was that tric script (Epigraphic Old South Arabian) which was related with the decline of the inland incense route focussed on to certain scripts of the Levantine littoral. According to cur- Marib and the lands of Saba, a new centre grew up in the rent scholarship, the major innovations that led to the deve- lightly populated tribal highlands, so that there was then a lopment of this southern Arabian civilization took place massive injection of people from the declining kingdoms of around the 8th century BC, with the earlier phases probably the desert fringe. starting as early as 1300 BC, roughly contemporary with the The above scenarios for the development of the Sabaean Late Bronze and early Iron Ages of the Levant (Sauer and and Himyarite states share a common factor, namely that both Blakely 1988). appear to have been founded as a state level society without The growth of the South Arabian civilization appears to a plausible predecessor. In the case of the Sabaeans, this void have been founded upon the incense trade which became par- occurred during the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC, whereas for ticularly vigorous during the early 1st millennium BC when the Himyarite state it was in the 1st millennium BC and ear- merchants started to trade frankincense and myrrh from what lier. is now the Dhofar region of southern Oman, through the oases The first archaeologists to explicitly recognize the Bronze of the Hadhramaut, Timna (in Qataban), Marib (in Saba: Fig. Age predecessors of the Sabaean state were a team directed 1) and thence northward through Najran (in Saudi Arabia) by Alessandro de Maigret (de Maigret 1990; Ghaleb 1990). towards Palestine, Egypt and Mesopotamia. North of Saba the In the semi-arid Khawlan foothills to the southwest of Marib, route followed the Hijaz mountains of Saudi Arabia where the Italian team recorded numerous small straggling settle- numerous oases provided stopping places and supply points ments of what must originally have been semi-sedentary vil- for the pack animals (initially probably donkeys, and later lages dated to the third millennium BC. However, as de camels) and merchants could be fed and watered. Although Maigret has noted, these were hardly likely to have been the there is relatively little textual information that explicitly sta- immediate predecessors of the noble Sabaean state. Nevert- tes how wealth was generated by the incense trade, it seems heless the Italian team had laid a firm foundation for later most likely that tariffs generated by the caravan trade produ- investigations. ced substantial revenues for the local rulers, part of which About a decade later, in 1994, a project from the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, directed by the writer and McGuire Gibson, initiated a survey of the high plateau cen- *) Dept. of Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, UK. This article is based on a lecture held Nov. 2004 at Leiden/Holland. tred around the modern town of Dhamar. This survey was 7 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXII N° 1-2, januari-april 2005 8

In order to account for the loss of archaeological sites of the pre-Himyarite populations, it is necessary to postulate that much of the archaeological record has been erased as a result of processes of landscape transformation. For example, the construction of millions of terraced fields and innumerable stone houses may well have resulted in the dismantling or erasure of part of the record of earlier settlement rendering them less visible than the archaeological mounds and well- built temple sites of the often more sparsely settled zones of the desert fringe. Surveys in the highlands were initiated in the Dhamar area in 1994, and with the aid of aerial photographs, it was imme- diately evident that the selected area did indeed include thou- sands of archaeological sites, nearly 400 of which have been recorded to date. The use of aerial photographs does not simply aid in the recognition of sites, but because most ancient settlements in the region are located on hilltops, the photographs indicate which summits had once been occupied. Not only does this make survey more efficient but, more important to surveyors working at altitudes of between 2000 and 3000 m above sea level, this saved us the laborious task of having to scale absolutely every hill. Once sites were recognized it was then possible to date them by diagnostic ceramics, which was then supported by radiocarbon dates obtained on charcoal recovered from soundings placed in a number of key sites. Now, after six field seasons more than 50 sites of the Bronze Age have been recorded. Many of these sites formed small hilltop strongholds that cover some 3-5 ha, but by the later stages of the Bronze Age (between about 1500 and 1200 BC), some of the larger settlements had shifted down to lower ground and expanded to cover up to 15 ha in area. In contrast to the oval buildings of the small (less than 1 ha) villages in the semi-arid desert fringe, buildings in the highland settlements are usually rec- tangular and frequently densely packed. The best example Fig. 1 Southern Arabia showing highlands (stipple) and the investigated so far is the 5 ha settlement of Hammat al-Qa, incense route leading from southern Oman to Hadhramaut, situated on a small mesa to the northeast of Dhamar. Here a Qataban and Saba and thence north through Ma{in towards the Levant. dense concentration of some sixty to eighty buildings were mapped stone-by-stone by Christopher Edens, Glynn Barratt and the author. Groups of buildings were ordered into blocks, intended to investigate the origins of the systems of terraced separated by occasional streets, the entire settlement being fields, as well as possible prehistoric antecedents of the Saba- enclosed by a fragmented circuit wall pierced by occasional eans and Himyarite states (Wilkinson et al. 1997; Edens and gates (Edens et al. 2000). Assuming that each house accom- Wilkinson 1998; Edens 1999). Because the Yemen highlands modated a nuclear family of five or six individuals, and lie in the path of the Indian Ocean monsoon, they receive depending upon how many buildings were occupied at the considerably greater annual rainfall (1000 to 250 mm) than same time, we estimate that the population of the settlement other parts of Arabia and are therefore remarkably verdant. would have been in the range of 300 to 480 people. In addi- Rain falls mainly in the spring and summer, and it is possi- tion to a range of hand-made ceramics (Edens 1999), the sur- ble to secure crops in both winter and summer, circumstan- face of the Bronze Age sites are scattered with numerous obs- ces that increase the potential carrying capacity of the land idian stone tools and flakes obtained from small-scale factory significantly. However, because the area of cultivable land is sites at nearby volcanic outcrops. often limited to narrow valley floors in the wetter parts of the Such settlements did not exist in isolation, and recent area, the inhabitants have had to resort to the construction of investigations in other parts of Yemen have shown that in the millions of terraced fields to increase the cultivable area. As desert fringe oases early stages of irrigation agriculture can a result of the construction of such fields, and because it was now be traced back to the 3rd millennium BC (Brunner possible to grow two crops per year, by the 19th and 20th 1997). Furthermore, at Sabir near Aden, there was a massive centuries AD the highlands had population densities as high late second millennium mounded settlement containing buil- or even higher than many parts of the so-called fertile cres- dings of virtually monumental scale (Vogt and Sedov 1998). cent. Food for the inhabitants of Hammat al-Qa would have The existence of such high population densities implies been grown around the edge of the neighbouring lowlands as that unless there had been a massive population explosion at well as on the hillsides below the settlement. In the latter some time in the recent past, in earlier times too the high- location, relict terraced fields and possible agricultural instal- lands must have been inhabited by large numbers of people. lations such as threshing floors were recognized and mapped. 9 THE OTHER SIDE OF SHEBA: EARLY TOWNS ON THE HIGHLANDS OF YEMEN 10

Other sites of similar date were also associated with relict ter- As a result of the recent surveys and excavations in the raced fields and although these could not be dated directly, highlands it is now apparent that throughout the third, second their physical proximity to Bronze Age sites and their advan- and first millennium BC the highlands were fairly densely ced state of dereliction and weathering support an early date. occupied presumably by social groups organized into clans That terraced fields were indeed early in date is also suppor- or tribes. These small-scale communities occupied hilltop set- ted by the presence of a terraced field or check dam in a val- tlements, were without monumental and ostentatious public ley floor near the village of adh-Dhra'ah to the SE of Dha- architecture and showed minimal or weak links with the mar. This low dry stone wall against which a relict soil had “outside world” of the Levant, the Horn of Africa or other built up, was buried beneath some 6 m of valley floor sedi- parts of Arabia. This provides a dramatic contrast with the ment and was dated by radiocarbon to slightly after 4000 BC. 1st millennium kingdoms of Saba that had strong political Existing evidence suggests that population levels in the Dha- and mercantile links with all three areas, as well as with Mes- mar area were rather low during the relatively moist period of opotamia and countries of the eastern Mediterranean. Never- the Neolithic, but that they increased rapidly during the phase theless, the small scale polities of the highlands supplied a of drying that followed during the later 4th and 3rd millennia crucial demographic context for the development of the BC (that is corresponding to the EBI -IV in Palestine). At pre- various south Arabian states that emerged. Thus, in Epigrap- sent the earliest evidence we have for ceramic using sedentary hic Old South Arabian texts we see occasional references to occupations on the Yemen plateau date to the period 3350- qayls and kabirs who appear to have been in some position 3010 BC and 2870-2470 BC (in calibrated years BC: Ekstrom of leadership in the provinces and highlands (Obermeyer and Edens 2003: 33). The sites in question, Jububat al-Juruf 1999: 45). The qayl was the representative of the most pre- and Hayt al-Suad, discovered by the Dhamar Survey and exca- stigious clan of a tribe, whereas the kabir may have been vated under the direction of Christopher Edens, demonstrate more closely linked to the centre of Sabaean political power, that agriculture depended on the classic “package” of Near and both offices appear to have provided some degree of Eastern crops including 6-row barley, bread wheat, lentils, and liaison between tribes of the highlands and the growing poli- other legumes (Ekstrom and Edens 2003: 29). ties of the desert fringe. Although the texts are not entirely Whether the population increase that appeared to have explicit, we get hints about the relationship between the high- taken place in the highlands during the third millennium BC land tribes and the centres of the Sabaeans as follows: was simply a result of natural population growth, or was the “Ma’rib became a pilgrimage center and the focus of a result of an influx of population from the desiccating interior “national” cult for all of Saba’. This included the highland of the Arabian desert remains unclear, at least until more sur- tribes; indeed since the idea of a pilgrimage to cult centers veys and excavations are conducted in the region. already was a tribal practice in the plateau region, this may Overall, it seems that large sedentary sites were occupied be the origin of the central Sabaean ritual.” Obermeyer in the highlands around Dhamar throughout the third, second 1999: 45. and first millennium BC. By the first millennium BC most ‘Also: “In one text, an official of the king of Saba orders cer- settlements continued to be found on hilltops, and by the end tain tribes (sh ’b) in the highlands to furnish “low people (mhqr)” who will assist in building the walls and towers of of the millennium a number of large hilltop towns, some for- the city of Ma’rib” (Jamme 1948: 15). Obermeyer 1999: 47. tified, were in evidence (Barbanes 2000). Similar settlements continued be occupied until around the 1st century BC, or It is therefore likely that during the Iron Age the highlands somewhat later, when the architecture of settlements chan- were connected by social and tribal links to the affluent Saba- ged quite dramatically. First, some high status settlements ean state. Nevertheless, the highland tribes were probably contained buildings embellished with ostentatious detailing subordinate to the Sabaeans, in part because the kings and sculptured either in an indigenous south Arabian style or in rulers of the desert fringe controlled the valuable resources the Hellenistic/Roman “naturalistic” style. Second, it seems of the incense trade and wielded considerable political power. that the classic south Arabian “tower house” was introdu- It is therefore this linkage between the highlands and low- ced; we know this from the vast quantities of rubble found lands that provides us with a hint concerning the social inter- on Himyarite sites as well as the presence of massive, deep actions that took place during the early stages of development wall foundations that were required to support the two or of the Sabaean state. more storeyed houses. Third, a significant number of large The picture that is now emerging from archaeological settlements had moved to lower slopes in order to be closer investigations in highland Yemen is that early small-scale to the fields that were now receiving irrigation waters from polities with hill-top towns developed certainly by the third well-constructed often monumental dams. These structures millennium BC, and probably during the late fourth millen- appear to have been associated with the abrupt rise of the nium BC. At this time the desert fringes appear to have been Himyarite state in the 1st century BC or shortly thereafter. rather sparsely populated, although the record of such occu- The dams were probably used to supply water for irrigated pations may remain buried below the sediments of the irri- fields the crops from which supplemented the food supply gated oases. The highlands continued to be rather densely conventionally obtained from small family-maintained ter- populated throughout the second and first millennium BCE raced fields. In addition to the more high status architecture but there appear to have been minor regional variations. With and dams, we also see the appearance of both monumental the rise of the incense trade around 1000 BC, the states asso- inscriptions cut in stone as well as more casual graffiti inci- ciated with that trade then grew rapidly on the edge of the sed in natural rock faces. The monumental inscriptions point pre-existing mountain core and along the route between the towards some official hand in the construction of public incense producing lands and the Levant (Fig. 1). As a result works and it seems that by the 1st century BC or early cen- of a complex series of political circumstances and economic turies AD the highlands had become a fully fledged state, shifts during the Roman/Early Byzantine period the overland albeit one which retained a cohesive tribal structure. route and its incense states trade, as well as the towns that 11 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXII N° 1-2, januari-april 2005 12 depended upon that trade, eventually went into a steep Fig. 2b) decline. As a result, the focus of wealth, power and the state flipped, to become concentrated on the high mountains south Yemen Highlands Chronology: 2000 of Dhamar where the capital became Zafar (Fig. 2). Since that time the Yemen state has been centred on the plateau, in Period Wet Highlands Desert Fringe more recent centuries at Sana. Sustainable Incense trade To conclude, although Yemen does not have the largest Agriculture Wealth over- Bronze Age towns in Arabia, (that honour probably goes to rides aridity the tell of Qalat al-Bahrain in the Gulf), the hilltop towns of the Yemen highlands do supply us with some of the clearest and most distinctive settlement plans. Of considerable impor- Hunter- tance is that the high and moist mountains of Yemen must Neolithic Sedentary have formed a densely populated core which provided the gatherers demographic foundation for the growth of both the Sabaean and the Himyarite states. Furthermore, when that state con- sisted of a thriving string of bustling oases, the highlands continued to be densely occupied albeit by a patchwork of tribal Bronze Early polities that contributed labour, pilgrims and others to the Chiefdoms incense trading towns (Fig. 2). It is therefore no longer neces- Age sedentary sary to posit mass movements of people from the Levant to account for the development of the Sabaean state, nor do we need to assume that with the rise of the Himyarite state there was a mass exodus from the desert fringe. Rather there were, Iron Age & Sabaean Chiefdoms State (1st millennium Fig. 2a) BC)

Yemen Highlands Chronology: Pre-1984 Himyarite Period Wet Highlands Desert Fringe State in (115 BC to State Sustainable Incense trade decline c. 600 AD) Agriculture Wealth over- rides aridity

Hunter- IslamicState Decline Neolithic ? gatherers

Fig. 2 The state of knowledge of Yemeni prehistory a) before 1984 and b) in the year 2000. Bronze ? ? Age since at least the third millennium BC, sufficient original inhabitants in the region to provide the demographic foundations for a state-level society. However no such society Iron Age could develop unless other conditions conducive to the rise & Sabaean of such a state were present. These must have included large ? State (1st millennium scale trade and the accumulation of wealth, literacy (in the BC) form of a written language from the north), and major public institutions. Such conditions, it can still reasonably be suggested, must have come about as a result of trade links with the Levant, Egypt and Mesopotamia. There may well have Himyarite State in been a significant flux of population between the highlands (115 BC to State decline and the neighbouring lowlands to the north east, but now it c. 600 AD) is not necessary to postulate a mass exodus from the Saba- ean lowlands to explain the growth of the Himyarite state, nor did the Sabaean, Qatabanian or Minaean states develop within a demographic vacuum. From at least the Early Bronze Age we can see numerous, IslamicState Decline albeit rather generic, similarities between the cultures of south west Arabia and the Levant. For example, a number of Bronze Age ceramic types from the Yemen highlands loosely 13 A L’AUBE DU IIIE MILLÉNAIRE, OÙ EN EST LA LEXICOGRAPHIE EGYPTIENNE? 14 resemble those of the EBI/II of the southern Levant. Moreo- van Beek, G.W., 1969 Hajar Bin Humeid. Investigations at a Pre- ver, the architecture of the straggling Early Bronze Age vil- Islamic Site in South Arabia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni- lages recorded by de Maigret (1990) to the southwest of versity Press. Marib resemble Early Bronze Age and EB/MB building com- Vogt, B. and A. Sedov, 1998 The Sabir culture and coastal Yemen during the second millennium BC-the present state of discus- plexes in the Negev and Sinai (Finkelstein 1995). Also, the sion. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 28: 261- arrival of the Near Eastern “package” of crops by the late 270. fourth millennium BC suggests that direct or indirect links Wilkinson, T.J., C. Edens, and M. Gibson, 1997 The archaeology had been established between north and south Arabia. By the of the Yemen high plains: a preliminary chronology. Arabian first millennium BC, when the incense trade was thriving, Archaeology and Epigraphy 8: 99-142. links become more explicit, specifically with the appearance of the South Arabian script. In addition, as was suggested in 1969 by Gus van Beek, the ceramics show some linkages, and a number of South Arabian types appear to come from a Levantine tradition (van Beek 1969: 369). These links which might have been sustained over as much as 5000 years sug- gest that Yemen and Palestine share some long-continued connections and perhaps fell within, at the most general level, the same cultural zone. It is still too early to say how such linkages may have been manifested, but it is likely that they may extend back into the Neolithic period, a period which for the highlands represents another dark age, at least in terms of archaeological knowledge.

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