Dosariyah: An Arabian Neolithic Coastal Community in the Central Gulf

Dosariyah: Reinvestigating a Neolithic coastal community in eastern Arabia’ describes the work carried out at Dosariyah, located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, which took place between 2010 and 2014. It was conducted by the joint German-Saudi Dosariyah Archaeological Research Project (DARP). A wealth of material remains was found during excavations within almost three metres of anthropogenic deposits. Radiocarbon dates and comparative studies of artefacts securely date the occupation of the site into the first centuries of the fifth millennium BC. The co-occurrence of locally produced artefacts that are technologically and typologically rooted in the local Arabian Middle Neolithic, and imports from southern Mesopotamia is characteristic of Dosariyah. However, the mechanisms behind this distribution of foreign materials along the Arabian Gulf coast, in particular, are still poorly understood. It is the central proposition of this book that the local societies living along the shores of the Arabian Gulf coast played an active role in the acquisition of Ubaid pottery and other objects originating in southern Mesopotamia. A predominance of imported objects, considered as ‘exotic items’, are understood as integral components of rituals that were part of temporary gatherings of larger groups of people at Dosariyah. Based on the material evidence from the site, such collective social events were embedded in everyday life during the fifth millennium BC.