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4,400-Year-Old Bronze Age Town Shows That Arabia Was Slow to Urbanize
A 4,400-year-old settlement found by archaeologists in the Khaybar Oasis of northwestern Saudi Arabia has revealed some eye-opening truths about the pace of urbanization on the Arabian Peninsula during the Bronze Age. In comparison to developments taking place at the same time in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Levant, a new study shows that the progress of urbanization in this part of the world was slow, although far from completely non-existent.
In an article just published in the journal PLOS One, an international team of researchers led by archaeologist Guillaume Charloux from the French research institute CNRS detail the results of their study of a small, fortified Bronze Age town known as al-Natah, which was discovered near the city of Al-'Ula in Saudi Arabia’s Hejaz region. This is the first settlement of its type found in this area, and for the time it existed its small size can be considered somewhat unexpected.
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This settlement covered about 3.7 acres (1.5 hectares) of land, and featured a central public district and an adjacent residential district that were encircled by a system of protective ramparts. The peak population of al-Natah never surpassed 500, and it was apparently occupied between the years 2,400 and 1,500 BC.
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