Environmental Research in Support of Archaeological Investigations in the Yemen Arab Republic: 1985-1987.

• Author: Potts, D.T.
• Position: Review

By MAURICE J. GROLIER, ROBERT BRINKMANN, and JEFFREY A. BLAKELY. The Wadi al-Jubah Archaeological Project, vol. 5. Washington: AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF MAN, 1996. Pp. xxxix + 469 (cloth). $85.

The final chapter of this massive study opens with a quotation from a work by the English antiquary Gilbert White who, in 1789, noted in speaking of Nature "that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined" (p. 337). Surely the Wadi al-Jubah can be justifiably regarded as "the most examined" wadi in Yemen. The fifth volume of studies to appear in the Wadi al-Jubah Archaeological Project series follows the precedent set by its immediate predecessor (William C. Overstreet et al., Geological and Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Yemen Arab Republic, 1985 [Washington: American Foundation for the Study of Man, 1988]), the bulk of which was devoted to geological, geomorphological, and other environmental studies. The present volume is, however, much more concerned than its predecessor with the anthropogenic and natural forces which created the agricultural landscape in which ancient south Arabian agriculture was practiced. Therefore, a good deal of the text is devoted to soil studies (pp. 13-259). Although much of this will be of greater interest to soil scientists than to historians or archaeologists, it is obvious that the human occupation of the region cannot be understood except in reference to the very particular landforms and patterns of sediment deposition which resulted from the kind of irrigation practiced in the highlands of Yemen. Therefore, the importance of such technical studies should in no way be underestimated. For those with a less than passionate interest in grain size and mollisols, the concluding summary (pp. 337-438) says it all, says it more briefly, and says it with more punch than the preceding three-hundred-odd pages.

But the present volume also contains some archaeology. Structures associated with an ancient irrigation system at Hujran al-Kanus are described by Niki R. Clark and Jeffrey A. Blakeley (pp. 215-36); the faunal remains from the sounding at Hajar ar-Rayhani are republished with more detail than was previously available by Brian Hesse (pp. 263-92); obsidian and flint tools are represented by Dan Rahimi (pp. 303-5); and a Bronze Age settlement at Kawlah al-Lajamah is discussed by Jeffrey A. Blakeley, Charles A. Vitaliano, and Robert Brinkmann (pp. 309-29). The main interest of the...