Settlement Discontinuities in Southwestern Arabia during the Middle and Late Holocene: The Bayḥān (Yemen) Region

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent research has produced an increasingly nuanced but still incomplete understanding of Neolithic through Iron Age communities in southwestern Arabia. Present evidence indicates that foraging communities in the lowland interior of Yemen adopted animal herding during the 6th millennium b.c. and irrigation farming during the 3rd millennium b.c. or possibly earlier. Survey in the Wādī Bayḥān area has identified multiple settlement discontinuities. Prehistoric structures in Wādī Ṣurbān reflect episodic occupation, probably by Bronze Age pastoralists. Geomorphological evidence for Bronze Age irrigation systems appears in large valleys; these systems continued into the Iron Age and developed in small valleys. Geomorphological and archaeological evidence suggests an occupation hiatus around 700 b.c. in some larger valleys such as Wādī Ḍurā’. Settlement discontinuities seem to have responded to abrupt climate fluctuations and to regional political history.