Jennifer Swerida

Archaeological research in arid landscapes investigates social resilience through oases as concentrated nodes of cultural and ecological interaction in an otherwise resource-scarce area. The proposed project reorients this dynamic through a landscape perspective, understanding regional scale wadis—dry waterways in which many oases are found—as important intermittent drainage basins affording past populations with sustainable resources and opportunities for connectivity beyond oases. In hyper-arid southeast Arabia, archaeological studies celebrate Early Bronze Age (EBA) oasis settlements as settings of resilient lifeways and stages for emergent social complexity. The human-(non)human interactions that took place in wadis outside oases and the roles such activities played in developing human resilience and complexity during this period, however, are less understood. This project involves regional survey and targeted excavations of the wadi landscape in the vicinity of the UNESCO site of Bat, an EBA oasis center in Oman. Previous research has identified EBA settlements and land use activities in wadi channels within 20km of the Bat oasis. Known and predicted sites will be investigated with an eye towards understanding the human-(non)human interactions that enabled resilience in the hyper-arid region, the processes of their creation, and the relationship between their inhabitants and those of the Bat oasis center.