Early Dilmun Seals from Saar: Art and Commerce in Bronze Age Bahrain.

• Author: Mayr, Rudolf H.
• Position: Book Review

Early Dilmun Seals from Saar: Art and Commerce in Bronze Age Bahrain. By HARRIET CRAWFORD. Ludlow, Shropshire: ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL, 2001. Pp. 110, illus.

This slim volume, filled with color photographs and drawings on almost every page, is extraordinarily attractive for an excavation report. Nonetheless, it begins with the statement that "this is the second volume in the final publications of the excavations . . ." at the site of Saar, Bahrain, conducted by the London-Bahrain Archaeological Expedition. Strangely, the first volume in the series is either not mentioned in the text or not identified as such.

The volume, devoted to the glyptic material uncovered at Saar, begins with a brief survey of the excavations (chapter 1). Saar is essentially a one-period site preserving the remains of a modest settlement from the beginning of the second millennium B.C. Most of the site was excavated, revealing clusters of uniformly modest houses arranged on a network of streets, with a few small public squares and a small temple at the town's center.

After a brief survey of the ways in which glyptic evidence may be studied (chapter 2), the analysis proceeds to a general characterization and classification of Dilmun seals (chapter 3). This section appears to be based largely on the work of P. Kjaerum (Failaka/Dilmun: The Second Millennium Settlements, vol. 1: 1, The Stamp and cylinder Seals. Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, vol. 17.1 [Aarhus, 1983]). The vast majority of the Saar seals (84 of the 95 discovered) belong to a single group in Kjaerum's scheme (Early Dilmun Style I-a). Most of the others are rare or absent at Saar, which seems both to confirm the validity of the scheme and to demonstrate the homogeneous character of the Saar settlement. The discussion of classification leads into the question of chronology. In absolute dates, occupation of Saar seems to have ended during the nineteenth century B.C. Crawford believes (p. 20) that this argues against the chronology recently proposed by H. Gasche et al. (Dating the Fall of Babylon [Gh ent, 1998]), by which the Dilmun trade with Mesopotamia would have continued for a century or more after the demise of the settlement at Saar. If the reviewer understands her argument, Crawford believes that Saar must have been occupied right until the end of Dilmun's trade with Mesopotamia. If this is so, it is not clear why.

The stylistic analysis of the Saar glyptic (chapter 4) blends discussion...