This book provides a comprehensive and detailed review of the evidence for Early Bronze Age mortuary rituals on the Oman Peninsula, describing the research conducted, synthesizing the resulting data, and presenting a complete view of the state of knowledge on the topic.

Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East is among the first comprehensive treatments to present the diverse ways in which ancient Near Eastern civilizations memorialized and honored their dead, using mortuary rituals, human skeletal remains, and embodied identities as a window into the memory work of past societies. In six case studies teams of researchers with different skillsets—osteological analysis, faunal analysis, culture history and the analysis of written texts, and artifact analysis—integrate mortuary analysis with bioarchaeological techniques. Drawing upon different kinds of data, including human remains, ceramics, jewelry, spatial analysis, and faunal remains found in burial sites from across the region’s societies, the authors paint a robust and complex picture of death in the ancient Near East. Demonstrating the still underexplored potential of bioarchaeological analysis in ancient societies, Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East serves as a model for using multiple lines of evidence to reconstruct commemoration practices. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian societies, the archaeology of death and burial, bioarchaeology, and human skeletal biology.

This volume brings together expert s in archaeology and bioarchaeology to examine continuity and change in ancient Arabian mortuary practices. While most previous investigations have been limited geographically to Egypt and the Levant, this volume focuses on the lesser-studied southeastern Arabian Peninsula, showing what death and burial can reveal about the lifestyles of the region’s prehistoric communities. In case studies from Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain, contributors explore the transition from the earliest to the most complex mortuary monuments in the Bronze Age and beyond. They consider sociopolitical and environmental factors that may have influenced mortuary practices and what skeletal biogeochemistry can reveal about changing mobility and access to food resources. They also discuss sites that illustrate more nuanced shifts in burial traditions that took place during the evolution of the Hafit to the Umm an-Nar cultures, a period of transformation often neglected because the semi-nomadic lifestyle of this intermediary culture left behind a limited archaeological record. Burial patterns reveal a shift from cairns to communal tombs that offers new insight into the relationship between the mortuary landscape and the living, while the presence of animal bones interred with human remains embodies the significance of herd management as symbols of both territoriality and reproduction. By using skeletal remains as a rich source of scientific data that complements studies of burial context, this volume represents an important turning point for mortuary research in the region. Its novel interdisciplinary and international perspective provides a synthesis of new ideas and interpretations that will guide future archaeological research in Arabia and beyond. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen Contributors: Eugenio Bortolini | Charlotte Marie Cable | Guillaume Gernez | Jessica Giraud | Richard Thorburn Howard Cuttler | Aurea Izquierdo Zamora | Olivia Munoz | Jill A. Weber | Benjamin W. Porter | Alexis Boutin | Debra L. Martin | Kathryn M. Baustian | Anna J. Osterholz | Peter Magee

In the Early Bronze Age, monumental stone and mud-brick structures known as towers appeared in Oman. This book aims to update the long-standing discussions on these towers and to assess their chronological depth of more than a millennium. The book also reassesses their possible functions in the light of recent archaeological research.

A ground-breaking investigation of burial practices and social transformations in the era when Cypriot agricultural communities moved from village to urban life and became major players in the eastern Mediterranean copper trade. The author develops an innovative theoretical and methodological approach that enables her to define and elucidate the shifting spatial relationships between tombs and habitation areas, the elaboration of rituals involving secondary treatment and collective burial, and changing patterns of mortuary expenditure and symbolism throughout the Bronze Age. Keswani proposes that during the Early-Middle Bronze periods, the growing elaboration of mortuary festivities and their crucial importance in negotiating status hierarchies contributed to the intensification of Cypriot copper production and the expansion of interregional exchange relations. Subsequent changes in mortuary practice suggest that the importance of collective burial rites and traditional modes of ritual display diminished over the course of the Late Bronze Age, as urban institutions multiplied and the bases of social prestige were transformed.

This volume represents the proceedings of the conference entitled Death, Burial and the Transition to the Afterlife in Arabia and Adjacent Regions that was held at the British Museum from November 27th to 29th, 2008. Contents: Introduction to the contributions on burial archaeology (Lloyd Weeks); 1) Remarks on Neolithic burial customs in south-east Arabia (Adelina U. Kutterer); 2) Ornamental objects as a source of information on Neolithic burial practices at al-Buhais 18, UAE and neighbouring sites (Roland de Beauclair); 3) On Neolithic funerary practices: were there necrophobic manipulations in 5th-4th millennium BC Arabia? (Vincent Charpentier and Sophie Mery) ; 4) The burials of the middle Holocene settlement of KHB-1 (Ras al-Khabbah, Sultanate of Oman) (Olivia Munoz, Simona Scaruffi and Fabio Cavulli); 5) Results, limits and potential: burial practices and Early Bronze Age societies in the Oman Peninsula (S. Mery); 6) Life and Death in an Early Bronze Age community from Hili, Al Ain, UAE (Kathleen McSweeney, Sophie Mery and Walid Yasin al Tikriti); 7) Patterns of mortality in a Bronze Age Tomb from Tell Abraq (Kathryn Baustian and Debra L. Martin); 8) Discerning health, disease and activity patterns in a Bronze Age population from Tell Abraq, United Arab Emirates (Janet M. Cope); 9) Early Bronze Age graves and graveyards in the eastern Jaalan (Sultanate of Oman): an assessment of the social rules working in the evolution of a funerary landscape.(J. Giraud); 10) An inventory of the objects in a collective burial at Dadna (Emirate of Fujairah) (Anne Benoist and Salah Ali Hassan); 11) Collective burials and status differentiation in Iron Age II Southeastern Arabia (Crystal Fritz); 12) Camelid and equid burials in pre-Islamic Southeastern Arabia (Aurelie Daems and An De Waele); 13) The emergence of mound cemeteries in Early Dilmun: new evidence of a proto-cemetery and its genesis c. 2050-2000 BC (Steffen Terp Laursen); 14) Probing the early Dilmun funerary landscape: a tentative analysis of grave goods from non-elite adult burials from City IIa-c (Eric Olijdam); 15) The Bahrain bead project: introduction and illustration (Waleed M. Al-Sadeqi); 16) The burial mounds of the Middle Euphrates (2100-1800 B.C.) and their links with Arabia: the subtle dialectic between tribal and state practices (Christine Kepinski); 17) Reuse of tombs or cultural continuity? The case of tower-tombs in Shabwa governorate (Yemen) (Remy Crassard, Herve Guy, Jeremie Schiettecatte and Holger Hitgen); 18) A reverence for stone reflected in various Late Bronze Age interments at al-Midamman, a Red Sea coastal site in Yemen (Edward J. Keall); 19) The Arabian Iron Age funerary stelae and the issue of cross-cultural contacts (Jeremie Schiettecatte); 20) Sabaean stone and metal miniature grave goods (Darne ONeil); 21) Excavations of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Yemen: a Minaean necropolis at Baraqish (Wadi Jawf) and the Qatabanian necropolis of Hayd bin Aqil (Wadi Bayhan) (Sabina Antonini and Alessio Agostini); 22) Funerary monuments of Southern Arabia: the Iron Age early Islamic tradition (Juris Zarins); 23) Burial contexts at Tayma, NW Arabia: archaeological and anthropological data (Sebastiano Lora, Emmanuele Petiti and Arnulf Hausleiter); 24) Feasting with the dead: funerary Marzea? in Petra (Isabelle Sachet); 25) Biomolecular archaeology and analysis of artefacts found in Nabataean tombs in Petra (Nicolas Garnier, Isabelle Sachet, Anna Zymla, Caroline Tokarski, Christian Rolando); 26) The monolithic djin blocks at Petra: a funerary practice of pre-Islamic Arabia (Michel Mouton); 27) Colouring the dead: new investigations on the history and the polychrome appearance of the Tomb of Darius I at Naqsh-e Rostam, Fars (Alexander Nagel and Hassan Rahsaz); 28) Introduction to the contributions on Arabia and the wider Islamic world (Janet Starkey); 29) The intercessor status of the dead in Maliki Islam and in Mauritania (Corinne Fortier); 30) Cairos City of the Dead: the cohabitation between the living and the dead from an anthropological perspective (Anna Tozzi Di Marco); 31) Observations on death, burial, graves and graveyards at various locations in Ras al-Khaimah Emirate, UAE, and Musandam wilayat, Oman, using local concerns (William and Fidelity Lancaster); 32) Shrines in Dhofar (Lynne S. Newton); 33) Wadi Ha?ramawt as a Landscape of Death and Burial (Mikhail Rodionov); 34) Attitudes, themes and images: an introduction to death and burial as mirrored in early Arabic poetry (James E. Taylor); 35) Jewish burial customs in Yemen (Dina Dahbany-Miraglia); 36) In anima vili: Islamic constructions on life autopsies and cannibalism (Jose M Bellido-Morillas and Pablo Garcia-Pinar); 37) Instituting the Palestinian dead body (Suhad Daher-Nashif).

This volume, with essays by leading archaeologists and prehistorians, considers how prehistoric humans attempted to recognise, understand and conceptualise death.

This study is the result of decades of analysis of the skeletal material from the Early Bronze Age I tombs at the site of Bâb edh-Dhrâ', Jordan.

This volume represents the proceedings of the conference entitled "Death, Burial and the transition to the Afterlife in Arabia and Adjacent Regions" that was held at the British Museum from November 27th to 29th, 2008. The conference promoted a broad consideration of the cultural traditions related to death and burial across the Arabian Peninsula, from prehistory to modern times, and was the first to attempt a cross-disciplinary study of burial archaeology in Arabia. The major themes of the conference included: specific local/regional burial traditions of ancient Arabia and adjacent regions, implications of burial data for aspects of contemporaneous living societies, beliefs surrounding death and the transition to the afterlife, landscapes of death and burial, burial and pilgramage, and recent and contemporary ideas and practices relating to death and burial.

Jill L. Baker’s innovative approach to mortuary archaeology begins by identifying commonalities of a culture from the “funeral kit” that occurs in all of its burials, using examples from the Ancient Near East and comparing it to other cultures.