doi: 10.2143/AWE.7.0.2033258 AWE 7 (2008) 189-202 THE IRANIAN IRON III CHRONOLOGY AT MUWEILAH 189 THE IRANIAN IRON III CHRONOLOGY AT MUWEILAH IN THE EMIRATE OF SHARJAH* Oscar White MUSCARELLA Abstract The site of Muweilah in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, has been published by its excavator Peter Magee over a number of years as having flourished during the Iron II period of the UAE/Oman, Arabian chronological system, ca. 1100/1000-600 BC. He has further as- serted that within this long period, Muweilah’s existence can be dated to the time of the north-western Iranian Iron II period, which terminated ca. 800 BC, dating his site specifi- cally to ca. 920-770 BC. Evidence used to affirm the Iranian Iron II chronology includes Iranian and local architecture and pottery parallels, and C 14 data. I rejected the viability and relevance of these parallels in print in 2003, to which Magee responded, reaffirming his 10th-early 8th-century BC chronology. Here I respond to the excavator’s ongoing defence, and argue for a considerably later north-western Iranian Iron III date for Muweilah. The Background Reacting to two of Peter Magee’s articles (of 1997 and 2001) about his site Muweilah in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, I challenged the chronology he pre- sented, claiming it was too high, and disagreed with his cultural/historical conclu- sions relating to the nature and date of the pottery and architecture recovered.1 Magee responded to my challenge,2 vigorously defending (appropriately) his posi- tion. Here I offer my response to his 2005 defence: I have not changed my mind regarding his dating of Muweilah and present my arguments for rejection here. Be- ginning with his first reports Magee has continuously reported that Muweilah came into existence during the UAE/Oman, Arabian Iron II period, which he dates from ca. 1100/1000 to 600 BC.3 The reader must understand from the beginning of the * I want to thank Ernie Haerinck and Dan Potts for making suggestions, suggesting bibliography, and sharing their views with me. And Peter Magee for graciously allowing me to publish photographs from his publications. 1 Muscarella 2003, 249-50, n. 102. My critique was presented briefly in a footnote in an article rejecting a new C 14 date recently proclaimed by the excavators of Gordion in Anatolia, arguing that it was too high. The footnote was presented to give another example of a C 14 date that I believed to be incorrect. I first encountered Muweilah at a Bryn Mawr lecture by Peter Magee in October 2002, where I first expressed (verbally) my disagreements about the chronology he assigned to Muweilah’s pottery and architecture. 2 Magee 2005a. 3 Magee 1996a, 208; 1996b, 246, 249; 1997, 96; 1999, 44; 2002, 161; 2004, 32; 2005a, 161; 2005b, 96. 1197-08_Anc.West&East_09 189 12-18-2008, 11:30 190 O.W. MUSCARELLA discussion that this chronological period, Iron II, is alleged to have lasted for 500 years; and that in Iran this same 500-year time-span encompasses two separate and distinct cultural and chronological periods, Iron II and Iron III – crucial issues not articulated by Magee. Within that broad Arabian Iron II time frame he specifically situates Muweilah’s construction and existence contemporary with the chronology of the Iranian Iron II period, with Hasanlu Period IV, which terminated ca. 800 BC (i.e. 200 years earlier than the apparent termination of the Iron II period in Arabian terminology).4 The Ceramics One significant component of the collective evidence he presents is that Muweilah has vessels with ‘bridged spouts’ (bridged describes the unit that connects the spout to the rim), which to him are forms typical of the Iranian Iron II period (Fig. 1).5 However, vessels with a bridged horizontal spout are a classic characteristic form of the Iranian Iron II period (Fig. 3). And although many of the spouts of the pub- lished Muweilah examples are broken-away, some are intact and reveal, not a hori- zontal but an upright, vertical spout – a characteristic not of the Iranian Iron II period, but of Iron III. He states that some Muweilah examples have a short bridge, others have no bridge. But Muweilah has no typical Iranian Iron II-form horizontal spouts. Magee also presents references and drawings of vessels from Rumeilah, a nearby site, as relevant comparanda for his asserted UAE and Iranian Iron II chronology there also.6 None has a bridged horizontal spout, and the examples presented are painted (as at Muweilah7 – Fig. 2), which decoration is a manifest post-Hasanlu IV/Iranian Iron II characteristic (below); and formal parallels for the spout form of E, joined to and level with the vessel rim, are from Luristan in the Luristan Iron III period.8 Sialk B (a cemetery) has painted bridged horizontal spout vessels, which were cited by Magee as Iranian Iron II chronological parallels for Rumeilah, and later 4 I am not a scholar of Arabian archaeology and I found it confusing that the very same terminol- ogy used in Iranian archaeology, Iron I, II, III, is employed in Arabia. For a discussion of the Iranian/ Hasanlu Iron Age terminology and problems, see Muscarella 2006. 5 Magee 1996a, 203, 205-06, figs. 16-17; 1999, 45, figs. 5-6; 2001, 121, 123, fig. 12; 2002, 164-65, fig. 2; 2005a, 165, fig. 1, right (compare the Hasanlu vessel at the right); 2005b, 99, 112, figs. 5 (Fig. 1 in this paper), 20; Magee et al. 2002, 141, fig. 13. 6 Magee 1996a, 208; 1996b, 246-48, fig. 7.B, C, E, G; 1997, 93-95, fig. 2; 2005a, 165, fig. 1, centre; see also Boucharlat and Lombard 2001, 218, fig. 11. 7 Magee 1999, 45, fig. 5; 2005b, 100, fig. 6. 8 Overlaet 2005, pls. 8.2, 9, 11.3-4. Further, the drawing of B (in n. 5 above) seems to be a resto- ration. 1197-08_Anc.West&East_09 190 12-18-2008, 11:30 THE IRANIAN IRON III CHRONOLOGY AT MUWEILAH 191 Fig. 2: Assorted vessels from Muweilah. 2: Assorted vessels from Fig. Fig. 1: Spouted vessels from Muweilah. from vessels 1: Spouted Fig. 1197-08_Anc.West&East_09 191 12-18-2008, 11:30 192 O.W. MUSCARELLA Fig. 3: Bridged horizontal spouted vessel from Hasanlu IV (Metropolitan Museum of Art 65.163.72). also cited as evidence supporting his early Muweilah chronology.9 He quotes Dyson, who, discussing the spout-painted juxtaposition there, claimed: ‘The main occupation of Sialk B would then belong to the eighth century…’ overlapping ‘the end of Hasanlu IVB and the beginning of IIIB.’10 The problem here is that Dyson made a significant error: painted pottery in fact does not appear in Hasanlu IV or in the following period Hasanlu III B, the Urartian period, but after the latter’s de- struction, in Period III A, which came into existence not earlier than the late 7th or early 6th century BC.11 I too would agree with Magee that ‘it is too early to make definitive statements concerning the date of Iron Age Sialk’,12 which is a complicated subject. But I would add, that based on the Sialk pottery, one cannot date Rumeilah (or, indeed, Muweilah) within the Iranian Iron II chronology as established in north-western Iran. Magee himself admits (but then ignores it) that the Arabian ‘decorative pat- 9 Magee 1997, 94, 96, fig. 2; 1999, 45; 2005a, 162; 2005b, 93-94. 10 Dyson 1965, 208. On this also, see Young 1965, 76-80, figs. 13-14. 11 This reality has been known for decades: viz. Haerinck 1978, 85. For details and bibliography, see Muscarella 2006, 15, 17-20. 12 Magee 2005a, 163 1197-08_Anc.West&East_09 192 12-18-2008, 11:30 THE IRANIAN IRON III CHRONOLOGY AT MUWEILAH 193 terns’ are ‘unlike the examples found in Iran during this period’, i.e. in the context here, Iron II.13 Magee continuously uses the terms ‘bridged’ or ‘bridged-spouted’ to describe the Muweilah spout form, but inexplicably does not inform us whether the bridged spouts are positioned vertically or horizontally. The position of the spout deter- mined how the liquid was poured out into another container, and although Magee mentions this process, he does not inform us how far the Muweilah people had to tip their spouts.14 Spouted vessel forms from the Iranian Iron III period exist, viz. at Hasanlu, Ziwiye and Yanik Tepe.15 In response to my 2003 brief comments on this significant matter, Magee re- plies16 it is ‘difficult to know’ how Muscarella can be certain that they are ‘horizon- tally or vertically spouted’. My answer is that lacking textual information, I looked at his published photographs, which do not portray horizontal bridged spouts; and how and why does Magee know that they are horizontally spouted: which must be the case to qualify for his Iron II attribution? But nowhere has he addressed this, recognised its significance in his discussions of parallels and chronology. He subtly adds two ambiguous modifications to his previously published claims.17 One is ‘that not all the Muweilah examples are comparable to the more elongated horizon- tal bridge-spouted examples from north-western Iran’. If by ‘more elongated’ he is now stating that the (some?) spouts at Muweilah are bridged horizontally, but are short, why not say it straightforward? Note that in this 2005 article the ‘horizontal’ word for the Muweilah vessels is mentioned for the first time, again ignoring its chronological importance.18 He also claims that he is not able to see how any of the Muweilah examples are ‘significantly [his emphasis] different from Iranian Iron Age II bridge-spouted vessels in general [my emphasis]’.