Overstreet, W.A., Grolier, M.J., and Toplyn, M.R., 1988. Geological and Archaeological Renaissance in the Yemen Arab Republic, Washington D.C.: American Foundation for the Study of Man. The Wadi el-Jubah [sic] Archaeological Project, Volume 4: xlii + 505 pp., numerous illustrations; maps and site plans in pocket.
Wadi al-Jubah leads down from the ruggedplateau of Yemen to the Ar-Rub' al-Kali, the waterless flatlands thatmake up the empty interior of southeastern Arabia. In geologicalterms, the mountains are Rift Valley highlands, which shoulderedtheir way up through the smooth blanket of seafloor strata thatcovers the rest of the peninsula, and a collar of backtilted bedsmakes long ridges where the granites slope beneath the desertfloor.
One such levered-up ridge of limestone liesathwart the broad mouth of Wadi al-Jubah to form a geological basin. Modern rainfall, at c. 5-10 cm/yr, is no greater than in the greatdesert beyond the barricade, but the al-Jadidah alluvial plain ispatterned with garden plots and orchards. Year-round water isaccessible from wells that reach a thin saturated zone ponded behindthe barricade, but most agricultural water needs are met byharvesting floodwater by techniques that predate the Islamicperiod&emdash;by how much is one of the questions addressed in thisreport. In al-Jadidah as in other rain-deficit regions of Arabia,there is so little surface or shallow ground water thatconduits&emdash;canals or subterranean qanats&emdash;have no purpose.Instead, the landscape signature of agricultural society in thisabsurdly dry terrain are stone walls, known as seil, to intercept andsettle floodwater. The seil complex&emdash;including streambedjetties, diversion walls, settling bunds, and terracedsilt-traps&emdash;is a land-graph that communicates without ambiguityhow the people of al-Jadidah think about the monsoonal rainfall thatpours, not from the skies, but out of the granite gutter ofWadi-el-Jubah once a year.
Farming under such extreme conditions wouldseem problematic at best, and the Wadi al-Jubah report shows thatslight changes in climate, or even religion(!) resulted in majorchanges in agricultural practice. The present land-use patterns datefrom historic (i.e., Islamic) times when al-Jadidah valley was a waystation on the trade road from Aden northward into the Hejaz and onto Jordan and Syria. Numerous tumuli and ancient seil plotboundary traces, some in presently uncultivated parts of this valley,have long suggested earlier phases of human habitation extending wellinto the pre-Islamic past. Overstreet (among others) has previouslydescribed evidence for the introduction of one-crop seilagriculture in southern Arabia, in place of systems allowing twoor more crops a year, but the timing and proximal cause of thischange is not fully known. It is clear that agriculture wasinterrupted more than once in al-Jadidah for long periods; the reportshows, on the other hand, that salinization (or other deleteriousbuildups) did not precede abandonment.
This report exemplifies the new focus ofinterpreting past cultures in terms of the interaction of people withtheir environment. The Wadi al-Jubah research is a brilliantdemonstration of archaeological forensics, using the chemical andmorphological impact of various kinds of land use on the soil androcks to document a complex agricultural and pre-agriculturalhistory, back through the Iron and Bronze Age to the Neolithic. Theinvestigations also turned up a surprise bonus: the first record ofPaleolithic occupation (Mousterian and Acheulean) in theY.A.R.
In the president's foreword, MerilynPhillips Hodgson gives a warmly enthusiastic appreciation of theimportance of the project to Yemeni and western scholars alike, andof the accomplishments of the authors and their associates during thefourth field season. After dipping repeatedly into this impressivevolume without, as it were, touching sides or bottom, it is difficultnot to share this enthusiasm. In terms of accomplishment alone, Ican not think of any other report which contains such a density ofhard data from so many disciplines, and of such professional quality,drawn out of an are of so little apparent promise. Perhapsfortunately, no princely tombs, clay-tablet libraries, or funeraryart have been found in al-Jadidah to divert attention form the recordof simple human achievement under murderous conditions. From all ofthe burial cairns dotting the landscape, Toplyn's team was permittedto open just one, and to develop what it could from study of thehumble and unwealthy burial within, dating to about the time ofConstantine. For the rest, Over street and Grolier directed studiesof geomorphology, soil chemistry, fossil snails, mineral resources,and regional geology to unravel the succession of events. A vitalchapter on the native flora of this intensely disturbed enclave wassupplied with Robert B Stewart, which gave (as far as possible) areconstruction of the way the little valley may have looked to thefirst visitors.
It's really too bad that this excellentstudy should have such a "frumpy look." Although solidly bound witha well-designed hard cover, it was made with a cheap, soft-finishpaper which reproduced poorly&emdash;most noticeably on photographicfigures, which came out looking like Xeroxes&emdash;and which addedat least 75% unwanted fat. (Although the pages in this corpulentbook measured exactly the thickness of a 500-sheet ream of ordinarycoated text paper, I counted only 273 sheets between the covers.) Inaddition, the sans-serif font looked amateurish, like a vanity press,and made a disconcerting impression even when reading the mostcompetent professional discussions. It was also hard to read;presumably in order to save space the characters and lines wereextremely crowded, where a smaller-bodied serif typeface of the samepoint size would have been much more effective.
There is no index (quite understandably),but the table of contents is conveniently broken down to thesubheads. I could not find any spelling or technical errors at all. Finally, I thought that some sections were unnecessarily heavy going,rather like eating a bale of shredded wheat without milk or sugar,and would have benefited from a session with an argumentative editor. Criticisms aside, I can not imagine anyone seriously interested incultural prehistory of arid lands being without this volume, and onemay hope that the American Foundation for the Study of Man willreceive the recognition it richly deserves for furthering competent,careful, and effective science in this sprawlingdiscipline.
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