Major transitions in subsistence, settlement organization, and funerary architecture accompanied the rise and fall of extensive trade complexes between southeastern Arabia and major centers in Mesopotamia, Dilmun, Elam, Central Asia, and the Indus Valley throughout the third and second millennia BC. I address the nature of these transformations, particularly the movements of people accompanying traded goods across this landscape, by analyzing human and faunal dental enamel using stable strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotopes. Individuals interred in monumental communal tombs from the Umm an-Nar (2500-2000 BC) and subsequent Wadi Suq (2000-1300 BC) periods from across the Oman Peninsula were selected, and the enamel of their respective tomb members analyzed to detect (a) how the involvement of this region in burgeoning pan-Gulf exchange networks may have influenced mobility, and (b) how its inhabitants reacted during the succeeding economic collapse of the early second millennium BC.
Stable strontium and oxygen ratios indicate that the Umm an-Nar inhabitants of southeastern Arabia were not highly mobile despite their increasing involvement in regional and interregional trade. However, such patterns do fit with archaeological evidence for an increasingly sedentary lifestyle associated with intensified oasis agriculture and the construction of large, permanent settlements and fortification towers. Non-local immigrants were interred in small numbers within Umm an-Nar tombs alongside local peoples, suggesting the existence of a more flexible and complex funerary ideology reflective of a broader appropriation of kinship in the formation of a multi-ethnic society. In addition, stable carbon isotope ratios suggest the consumption of a broad, mixed C3-C4 diet fitting with the employment of a variety of subsistence strategies, although preference was given to C3-based sources of food.
The dramatic changes in the archaeological record associated with the transition to the Wadi Suq period are not mirrored in isotopic indicators of paleomobility. As in the Umm an-Nar, the Wadi Suq population does not appear to have been highly mobile despite a decrease in the number, size, and permanence of settlements. Oxygen isotope values do not differ from the preceding period, and while strontium ratios are significantly different, this is likely a reflection of the exploitation of different geographic areas with correspondingly disparate isotope signatures. Stable carbon isotope values indicate a considerable change in subsistence practices involving a greater reliance on C3-based foodstuffs, with an emphasis not on marine resources but on oasis agriculture. These data corroborate the strontium and oxygen isotope results and portray a society that was still relatively sedentary and continued to practice cultivation. Moreover, the continued presence of non-local immigrants interred in local tombs suggests that interregional economic relations did not completely break down during this “Dark Age” of purported cultural isolation.
The findings of this study illustrate continuity between the Umm an-Nar and Wadi Suq periods and call into question how substantial the so-called “collapse” of the early second millennium BC actually was.