European trade ceramics on the Arabian Peninsula 1800–1960

European trade ceramics found across Arabia date from the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries and were made at factories mostly located within northwest Europe. After c. 1930, imitations of European ceramics are increasingly represented from factories in Japan and later China. Combining the information from archaeological excavations on the Arab coast of the Gulf and ceramics from museum and private collections, information from the archives of the British India Office and the Maastricht pottery order books for Arabia, a relatively detailed overview of this market for trade ceramics can be reconstructed. Three key points may be highlighted: First, the complex routes via which European ceramics arrived within Arabia, second, the significance of the link between producers and consumers on opposite sides of the globe, exemplified by specific designs and types of vessels manufactured for the Arabian market, and third, new layers of meaning that were given to such objects as they were incorporated into the homes, social fabric and the lives of people in Arabia.     

International Regimes and Commercial Hegemony: Control of the Arabian Littoral, 1800–1905

Herbert Hoover's Plan for Ending the Second World War; Joan Hoff Wilson

Modern Chinese Diplomatic History: A Guide to Research; Immanuel C.Y. Hsu     

The Mesopotamian frontier of the Arabian Neolithic: A cultural borderland of the sixth–fifth millennia BC

The material culture of coastal Arabian Neolithic sites of the sixth–fifth millennia BC contains a range of small Mesopotamian-style objects, in addition to Ubaid pottery. There is a significant concentration of such objects at the Kuwaiti sites, H3 and Bahra 1, with lesser amounts in the Central Gulf region and virtually none in the Lower Gulf. The combination of material and symbolic culture at the Kuwaiti sites indicates that their inhabitants could communicate with both Ubaid and Neolithic peoples with equal facility, implying a key role in the region’s earliest experiments in maritime trade. Moreover, the presence in southern Iraq and at Susa of distinctive arrowheads, and possibly Arabian Coarse Ware ceramics, suggests that the range of eastern Arabian Neolithic peoples extended all along the ancient shoreline to the vicinity of the Mesopotamian Ubaid settlements, and even Susiana. The bifacial pressure-flaked arrowheads are of two different types that are well attested in eastern Arabia, though one type is more common in southern Iraq and Susiana, hinting at a local population related to the Arabian Neolithic. These finds are quantified and illustrated in this paper, and indicate a cultural borderland stretching for around 300 km north of Kuwait.     

Sharks in the lagoon? Fishing exploitation at the Neolithic site of Suwayh 1 (Ash Sharqiyah region,Arabian Sea,Sultanate of Oman)

The study of the fish bones from the Neolithic shell midden of Suwayh 1, excavated in the 2000s, identified a total of 1060 identifiable fish bones, from 23 families, 33 genera and 28 different species. Radiocarbon dating demonstrates that the sites date to the early 6th to mid 5th millennium BC. The results follow an eight-phase chronology highlighted by an earlier malacological study. The most important taxa were the Carcharhinidae (requiem shark), Rhinopteridae (cownose rays), Sparoidea (Sparidae and Lethrinidae: sea breams and emperors) and Ariidae (sea catfishes). The results of the fish study show that the Suwayh lagoon must have gradually opened up to the sea and been populated with mangroves. The unique presence of so many sharks at this site seems to indicate that the inhabitants had a special interest in shark fishing and that their location was ideal for this specialised activity. Two types of fishing nets and hooks have been discovered, which require the use of different fishing techniques.     

About two seal-impressed jars from Tell Abraq (Emirate of Umm al-Quwain). New evidence for intercultural networks in the lower Arabian Gulf in the late 2nd – beginning of the 1st millennium BC

Ongoing excavations at Tell Abraq (Emirate of Umm al-Quwain, U.A.E.) are revealing new aspects of this multiperiod site, which was occupied from c. 2500 BC to 300 AD. Together with substantial architecture dated to the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, relevant assemblages of archaeological materials are being collected and dated to different phases of the site’s life. Among this material, exceptional is the discovery of two jars bearing the impression of two different cylinder seals, which will be presented here. Seal impressions on any media are extremely rare in the whole of south-eastern Arabia and strongly indicate a foreign provenance for the jars. Their iconographic study, the fabric and morphological parallels for the jars, and probable chronology will be discussed, as this can highlight transmarine connections during the late 2nd-first half of the 1st millennium BC, as well as provide new data to address chronological issues in south-eastern Iran itself.