Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies: Papers from the forty-first meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held in London, 19-21 July 2007

Abstract

The Seminar for Arabian Studies is the principal international academic forum for presentation and discussion of the latest research in the humanities regarding the Arabian Peninsula (including archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, ethnography, language, history, art, architecture, etc) from the earliest times to the present day or, in the case of political and social history, to about the end of the Ottoman Empire (1922). The Seminar has been meeting since 1968 and the 2008 seminar will be the 42nd meeting. The Seminar meets annually for three days - Thursday to Saturday - in July, and has been hosted by the British Museum since 2002. Up to 180 people attend the Seminar from all over the Middle East, Europe, and North America as well as India, Pakistan, Australia and Japan and up to 45 papers and posters are now presented each year. The 2007 Seminar included a special invited session on the The Palaeolithic of Arabia which was organised by Dr Jeffrey Rose. This field is the focus of new and intensive investigation and we are delighted to have facilitated such research at the Seminar. The papers which arose from this session are included here in a separate section, together with the organiser's research objectives and a report on the round-table discussion that followed the session. We hope to continue this concept of incorporating a special research session into future programmes and the steering committee welcomes suggestions. However, we continue to also strongly encourage contributions on the latest research and results of current fieldwork, which can be delivered either as papers or posters.