The Latest on the Archaeology of Southern Oman (Report‪)‬

This volume (henceforth KR 2) is a description of archaeological work conducted at Khor Rori, Dhofar Governorate, Sultanate of Oman, from 2000 to 2004 by an Italian team from Pisa University (IMtO) headed by A. Avanzini, a South Arabian historian and epigraphist (pp. 609-41). Excavations were conducted at five areas of the colony. Architectural and stratigraphic details are followed here by a report of the ceramic finds (Sedov, Buffa, and Pavan). Coins are described for each area (Sedov), as are the small finds (Lombardi, Buffa, and Pavan). Carenti and Wilkens analyze the fauna. There is a small section on archaeopalynology (Lippi, Becattani, and Gonnelli), followed by a detailed archaeological survey of the immediate Sumhuram locale (Cremaschi and Perego). Rougeulle describes the Islamic settlement on the adjoining promontories protecting the lagoon entrance. More specialized technical studies of the KR site and area include a regional botanical study (Raffaelli, Tardelli, and Mosti), a discussion of the chemistry of frankincense (Ribechini, Raffaelli, and Colombini), an analysis of a pine resin specimen (Ribechini and Colombini), and technical aspects of mudbrick and mortar use at KR (Lippi, Pallecchi, Bellini, and Gonnelli). A small Dhofar survey (Dini, Tozzi) is a repetition of the earlier work described in KR 1, 325-63, and a final section describes the botanical work at Wadi Dawka Frankincense Park (Raffaelli, Tardelli, and Mosti). Two appendices include a list of C-14 dates and a concordance of excavated loci based on room, street, square, building, wall, and stratigraphical units. As such, most of the data described in the volume represents a continuation of the Khor Rori Report 1 of 2002 (KR 1), which one should have available for consultation when using KR 2. Points of contention involving the excavation can be addressed as follows. At some point, in the early third century B.C., a colony ('m-s) of people from Shabwa in the Hadramawt was established on the Khor Rori lagoon. By the first century B.C. it was named Smhrm--perhaps after a Hadrami king (KR 1, 21-25) and known in the Periplus as Moskha Limen. The settlement was wholly isolated from its (home) territory and appears never to have grown larger in size (KR 2, 609). Primarily ceramic and coinage evidence has been used to date this earlier settlement, which apparently had no formal stone buildings. By the late first century B.C., a formal building complex (I) along the lines of typical South Arabic construction was constructed. Epigraphic South Arabian (ESA) inscriptional blocks from a later phase (II) detail the expedition and the nature of the colony (KR 1, 125-40; KR 2, 609-41). The nature of this colonization is discussed by Avanzini (KR 2, 613-15) in a fairly brief manner, but comparative studies of colonization of the Near East (Uruk IV, Old Assyrian) as well as the anthropology of colonization could perhaps have amplified the discussion (see Newton 2000, 2009: 18; Stein 2005; Algaze 1993).