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[Yemen Update 30/31(1992):26,35]
Trying to sight a ranging pole halfconcealed behind some rather lush vegetation at Hajar am-Nab, Iobtusely continued to marvel at my luck, for when I took this job, Ifigured that it would be a long time before I would be gazing througha theodolite again. Last September, I had set up a grid for asurface collection of Acheulian material at Kteir 23 in the al-Kombasin in Syria, and the day after I got back, Sheila Carapico offeredme the job as resident director in Sanaa. Accepting the opportunitywith alacrity meant that any plans for continuing to direct thatoperation in the Spring of '92 had to be abandoned for the pleasuresof a desk job in Sanaa; and I had gone to Syria to escape frompaperwork in Basle. It was thus quite a shock to find that before mycolleagues had returned to al-Kom, I was already back in the field,even if it was only for two days in a very minor part ofJean-François's survey project.
Jean-François directs the FrenchArchaeological mission in Yemen, and for the past few years he hasbeen conducting a survey operation in the western part of theGovernorate of Shabwa where the borders of the ancient kingdoms ofSaba, Awsan, Hadramaut and Qataban met, with the result that theywere frequently redrawn, depending upon the relative strength of therulers. The large kingdom of Awsan was apparently conquored by theSabaen Mukarrib Karib'il Watar in the fifth century B.C., butaccording to J. Pirenne, a relatively minor kingdom - restricted tothe Wadi Markha region - of the same name resurfaced during thecenturies around the beginning of our era. The exact date of itsultimate demise is unclear, but it must have suffered from the riseof the maritime based Red Sea Trade dating to the second century ofour era, and ultimately incorporated into the Himyarite Empire. Inany case, the region of the kingdom was cut by the modern border ofthe two Yemeni states, making access difficult before unity. Whenthe border was finally eliminated, one of Jean-François'sfirst goals was to take a look at the sites there, and he was kindenough to invite me to join him for a brief trip, during which wewere able to visit four large tells.
The tells were not exactly terra incognita,as J. Pirenne, B. Doe and Yusuf 'Abdallah, among others, had visitedsome of them, but no one had yet tried to make plans of them andgather surface pottery, which is what Jean François has beendoing. Last December he was in the area to the north of the JabalKushar, the mountains of schist that separate Wadi Markha from theEmpty Quarter, where he plotted the last of about 70 sites, and thistrip in February 1992 was intended to put the last few sites on themap, so that a preliminary version could be printed.
We were thus trying to get an outline ofeach tell, attempting to identify any fortifications, structures andpottery that might be visible. Many ancient South Arabian cities areassociated with a small temple in the lower town outside theperimeter of the main tell. The main tell is generally formed by thehouses and structures within a city wall defining the limits of thetell itself. These walls were basically makeshift, closing off theopen space between two houses, so that the fortified front visiblefrom without was a combination of walls expressly built, and theexternal walls of the houses on the edge of the city. The largertells we visited had however a slightly different plan, as therewould appear to have been a citadel of some kind on each one makingup about a quarter of the total surface area, built slightly higherthan the rest of the town. The - admittedly fragmentary - city wallswe examined would appear to have been as well built as others thatJean-François has seen.
The pottery that we found was not exactlyimpressive, consisting of the crudest cooking pots and storage jars,but the few recognizable pieces that we did pick up seemed toindicate a rather later date for three of the four tells, hintingthat the area was only abandoned in the final centuries before theIslamic era. This corresponded to the palaeographic characteristicsof one of the inscriptions which the villagers showed us at one tell,and would thus extend the "known" dates beyond even Pirenne's firstcentury A.D. date, which in fact corresponds quite well to thereference to the "Coast of Awsan" in the Periplus.
It is perhaps not entirely amiss to suggestthat the defensive character of these towns be associated with thespecific history of the "second" Awsan kingdom. The defensiveelements apparent elsewhere can be attributed to historicaldevelopments, villages being haphazardly transformed into prosperouscities, which were only threatened when the accumulated wealth beganto attract the attention of neighbours who were undergoing a similartransformation, leading to a preliminary kind of fortification. Ifthe highpoint of the renewed Awsan kingdom is correctly assigned tothe centuries just before and after the beginning of our era, thenits cities may owe their origin to the trade-generated wealth alreadypresent around them. They may have been agricultural centresproviding goods for the caravans travelling along the fringe of theEmpty Quarter, and thus emerged at a period when fortification wasalready widespread in South Arabia, so that their internalarchitecture leapt directly from that of a village to a fortifiedcity. During our survey we also came across one sand-covered tellthat seemed to be markedly older and may thus date to the period ofthe first kingdom, and if one is permitted to speculate far beyondthe evidence on offer, it is conceivable that Awsan region - and notjust the kingdom - was effectively eclipsed for the two or threecenturies when it fell under Sabean and Qatabaniandomination.
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