The archaeological bitumens of Bahrain from the Early Dilmun period (c.2200 BC) to the sixteenth century AD: A problem of sources and trade

Abstract

This first series of analyses conducted on sixty-two samples of archaeological bitumen from Bahrain highlighted a notably singular situation in this area of the Middle East. For reasons not yet elucidated, it appears that the potential bitumen source at Jebel Dukhan was not used locally during the long period investigated by the study, but it clearly appears that Bahrain imported bitumen from both Mesopotamia and present-day Iran. One of the most outstanding discoveries is that Saar and other Early Dilmun sites imported their bitumen almost exclusively from present-day Iran, whereas the contemporary levels of Qal'at al-Bahrain show evidence of having imported bitumen exclusively from Mesopotamia. In the following phases, the latter site exhibits greater diversity with bitumen imported from several sources: Hit in Iraq (Middle Dilmun/Kassite samples), Iran (Late Dilmun II/Achaemenid and Tylos samples), Northern Iraq and possibly Southeastern Iraq and Dehluran province in present-day Iran. Archaeology is not yet able to offer explanations for all these variations in bitumen sources. The results of our work do, however, ensure that bitumen must now be added to the long list of materials traded between Dilmun, Mesopotamia and present-day Iran. Indeed, trade in bitumen may have begun as early as the Ubaid period when the evidence is considered from coastal settlement C in Ain as-Sayh in Eastern Saudi Arabia dated to c. 4300 BC (53). Our results also suggest that trade in this particular commodity was always one way: it was exported from Mesopotamia and Elam to Dilmun and the Lower Gulf. The associated technology must have been likewise transferred to the Gulf.