The Early Dilmun Settlement at Saar.

• Author: Yule, Paul
• Position: Book review

The Early Dilmun Settlement at Saar. Edited by ROBERT KILLICK and JANE MOON. London-Bahrain Archaeological Expedition, Saar Excavation Report, vol. 3. London: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY, 2005. Pp. xii + 367, illus. [euro]75.

The key importance of Dilmun requires no justification to Near Eastern specialists. Dilmun interfaces between ancient Mesopotamia, the Persian/Arabian Gulf littoral and Harappan/post-urban South Asia. The Early Dilmun settlement at Saar lasted for about three hundred years, from 2050 to 1750 B.C.E. (p. 6), to judge from the pottery chronology at the large and extensively excavated site of Qala'at al-Bahrain. Robert Killick, Jane Moon, and their associates excavated here from 1990 to 1999. Qualitatively and quantitatively, the success of this model private initiative is evident in the talent and resources attracted. This excavation report documents the cooperation of the team and the host country.

The third of a series, this volume reports on the excavated buildings in the settlement, some of which were preserved to roof height. The preceding volumes dealt with The Dilmun Temple at Saar (1997) and Early Dilmun Seals from Saar (2001). Most striking about this book are its compact documentation and attractive appearance. This is the first excavation report of this sort to be printed exclusively with color illustrations. This well-designed presentation is optically and aesthetically very appealing and a model for other reports. Twelve chapters document what was not already treated in the two preceding volumes mentioned above. Documentation of the architecture amounts to half of the volume. The basic historical and archaeological situation as well as basic observations about the state of research are succinctly mirrored in the introduction.

Sixty-eight of eighty-four building structures were excavated (chapter 2). It is difficult to date sites such as Saar, because the various buildings are not directly related to each other (p. 7). In this situation, a comparison of the finds provides some help. Houses are assigned to blocks, and the relative stratigraphy of the different blocks is then studied. Site levels should reflect major markers in the history of the settlement (p. 21). The strata are divided into four levels (p. 22, table 2.1), level 4 being the deepest. Six groups of structures can be assigned to quarters. The correlation between level and seriation of excavated pottery is made clear in table 2.2 (p. 23). Individual buildings are described by means of photos and clean color drawings by phase (chapter 3). In addition, the form and function of various buildings is studied in terms of their shape, size, and spatial arrangement. Clearly, the settlement grew over time. Owing to the many standard features in these buildings (p...