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Beyond The Desert And The Sown: Settlement Intensification In Late Prehistoric Southeastern Arabia, Peter Magee

Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Arabia lies outside the focus of most archaeologists working in western Asia and is considered to have been a periphery in the past and therefore peripheral to contemporary research interests. The reasons for this include generalized assumptions about human-environmental dynamics and a belief in the necessity of foreign intervention as a spur for innovation and change in arid environments. In this paper, these two assumptions are examined, and a case study from southeastern Arabia is presented which details evidence for indigenous adaptation and a concomitant emergence of political and economic complexity in the early first millennium B.C.