What did they eat in early Eastern Arabia?Paper presented at the Historic Oman: Cultures, Contacts, Environment Conference, sponsored by the Anglo-Omani Society and organised at The British Museum (Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities), London, UK - 17-19 July 2000 Mark Beech Abstract: Fish and marine resources clearly played a significant role in the diet of the early peoples inhabiting the coastal regions of South-East Arabia. Ptolemy is one amongst a number of early writers and visitors to the area who describe its fish-eating communities or "ichthyophagi". In this talk I will present some of the details of my analysis of the earliest archaeological evidence we have concerning food consumption in the region. This will primarily concentrate on my study of the fish bones recovered from a number of archaeological sites in the Arabian Gulf. Other important marine resources like shellfish, as well as dugongs and turtles, will be briefly discussed. Domestic animals such as cattle and sheep/goat were maintained at a few localities and wild mammals such as gazelle were also hunted. The recent exciting discovery of 7000 year old charred dates (Phoenix dactylifera) and date-stone impressions in burnt mud brick from Dalma island in the United Arab Emirates suggests that dates (and perhaps domestication of the date palm?) may have taken place earlier than previously thought in this region. Both fish and dates formed important dietary components and occasionally they were clearly eaten together at the same time. I will present details of a recently discovered pre-Islamic cooking vessel fragment containing traces of organic residues which appear to comprise burnt dates mixed with fish. [ HOME - WHATS NEW - RESEARCH - PUBLICATIONS - PROFILE - EAL - USEFUL LINKS - FUN ] |