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Prehistoric small scale monument types in Hadramawt (southern Arabia): convergences in ethnography, linguistics and archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Abdalaziz Ja'afar Bin 'Aqil  and
Joy McCorriston
Abdalaziz Ja'afar Bin 'Aqil
Affiliation:
1General Organization of Antiquities and Museums, P.O. Box 8686, Al-Mukalla, Hadramawt Governate, Republic of Yemen (Email: khuzmah@yahoo.com) (Corresponding author for Arabic)
Joy McCorriston
Affiliation:
2Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University, 4034 Smith Laboratory, 174 W. 18th Ave., Columbus, OH 43210, USA (Email: mccorriston.1@osu.edu) (Corresponding author for English)
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Abstract

The authors report new understanding of the prehistoric monuments of Hadramawt (Yemen) using archaeological fieldwork, linguistic terminology and ethnography. The stone tombs, platforms and alignments are shown to have experienced particularly interesting life histories. Passing travellers add stones and bury camels, shrines are reconditioned and dismantled to construct goat pens. It is clear that only this kind of multi-disciplinary expertise can hope to define the prehistoric sequence in an arid and rocky mountain landscape in which non-literate pastoral peoples have left few other traces. An online photo essay accompanies the article at http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/mccorriston/index.html

Keywords

South ArabiaYemenHadramawtprehistorictombsstone monumentsethnographylinguistics
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 83 , Issue 321 , September 2009 , pp. 602 - 618
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2009

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