Facing Early Bronze Age climate change in South East Arabia: New data from the hydraulic structures of Salūt-ST1,Central Oman: A geoarchaeological perspective

Abstract

Studies concerning the human response to changing climate in the arid region of South East Arabia are currently scarce and rarely based on geoarchaeological data. The detailed geoarchaeological study of the sedimentary filling of ditches, channels and wells at the Bronze Age tower site of Salūt-ST1, in central Oman, provides the opportunity to start filling this lacuna. The data, collected with a combination of field observation and thin section study, illustrate the lowering of the water table from the Early Bronze Age to the Iron Age II period (c. 2500–600 BC) as a result of local aridification. Besides, they shed light on the ways in which the community living in the area first exploited a still favourable situation with a relatively abundant water supply and later was forced to cope with the deteriorating climate around the end of the third millennium BC. While the study highlights climate change at a relatively small scale, the results and their interpretation are contextualized with other, larger-scale paleoclimate data available for the region. The Early Bronze Age hydraulic structures of Salūt-ST1 are also discussed in relation to similar structures excavated in South East Arabia.