Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/63261
Title: Metal artefacts and archaeometallurgical analyses
Contributor(s): Weeks, Lloyd  (author)orcid ; Faber, Eddy (author); Goodburn-Brown, Dana (author); Zhao, Jian-xin (author); Nguyen, Ai Duc (author); Feng, Yuexing (author)
Publication Date: 2024
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/63261
Abstract: 

The rescue excavation of the Qarn al-Harf tombs produced a small but significant assemblage of metal artefacts in copper, copper alloys, silver, and electrum. Given the evidence of extensive disturbance and robbing of these tombs in antiquity, it is clear that the metal artefacts recovered from the tombs are but a small, possibly unrepresentative, subset of the metal originally interred with burials at the site. Excavations of Bronze and Iron Age burials in the region, for example at Dibba al-Baya in the hinterland of the port of Dibba (Genchi et al. 2018), at Qattarah near Al Ain (unpublished data from Al Ain Museum), and at Qidfa in Fujairah (Im-Obersteg 1987; Corboud et al. 1988: 16–17), indicate that the collective burial chambers of later prehistoric Southeast Arabia could each originally have contained many hundreds of copper-base and precious metal artefacts.

Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from the detailed study of this small assemblage of material. Initially, this chapter presents a typo-chronological study of the metal artefacts from the Qarn al-Harf tombs, placing them into the broader archaeological and artefactual context of Southeast Arabia in the Wadi Suq period (c.2000–1600 BC) and Late Bronze Age (c.1600–1250 BC). Subsequently, the results of a series of scientific investigations of the artefacts are presented, including a range of compositional, microstructural, and isotopic analyses. The data generated by these techniques, when integrated with analyses of contemporaneous metal assemblages from sites across Southeast Arabia, facilitate consideration of raw material exploitation, alloying technologies, artefact fabrication, provenance, and exchange. These archaeometallurgical analyses, on their own and in tandem with studies of other material remains from Qarn al-Harf, offer important insights into broader aspects of society in Southeast Arabia in the 2nd millennium BC.

Publication Type: Book Chapter
Source of Publication: Southeast Arabia at the Dawn of the Second Millennium: The Bronze Age Collective Graves of Qarn al-Harf, Ras al-Khaimah (UAE), p. 1-100
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Place of Publication: Oxford, United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781789257953
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 430102 Archaeology of Asia, Africa and the Americas
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 280113 Expanding knowledge in history, heritage and archaeology
HERDC Category Description: B1 Chapter in a Scholarly Book
Publisher/associated links: https://www.oxbowbooks.com/9781789257953/southeast-arabia-at-the-dawn-of-the-second-millennium/
Appears in Collections:Book Chapter
School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Files in This Item:
1 files
File SizeFormat 
Show full item record
Google Media

Google ScholarTM

Check


Items in Research UNE are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.