AFALULA / RCU / CNRS3D reconstruction of al-Natah, alongside a wall to protect against nomadic invasionsAFALULA / RCU / CNRS
A 4000-year-old settlement in the Khaybar oasis, in what is now Saudi Arabia, has provided new information about the people who inhabited the region, according to French and Saudi archaeologists. The team found the remains of a 2.6-hectare fortified town, which appears to have been inhabited for around one thousand years. The town, named “al-Natah,” was home to some 500 people and was organized into a residential area, an administrative area, and a cemetery, connected by small streets. Fragments of pottery and grinding stones were found in the remains of at least 50 clay dwellings. The researchers interpreted the discovery as indicative of slow urbanism, different to the process that occurred in Egypt and Mesopotamia at the same time. Their way of life would have been somewhere between pastoralism, in which nomads travel in search of pasture for their animals, and more complex urban settlements. The region was protected by a wall almost 15 kilometers in length (PLOS ONE and Live Science, October 30).
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