Sultanate of Oman
Wadi Hasid

Location of the site

The Wadi Hasid site is located at the top of a rocky promontory overlooking a small oasis that emerges along the wadi of the same name. It is this geographical position that gives this site its important archaeological potential. Indeed, the site is located at the junction of the Wadi Hasid and the Wadi Bani Khalid which descends to the sea, a few kilometers away, and goes very far upstream along the Jebel Hajar. It is then obvious that this position allows for the control of the interface between the coastal zone and the inland. The preponderant role of this point of Ja’alan in the regional exchanges of the Omani Peninsula since the Bronze Age with Indus, Iran and Mesopotamia, as underlined previously, reinforces even more the importance and the archaeological potential of this site turned towards the sea and the Indus.

Historical context

The Oman Peninsula is the geographical name given to the southeastern tiṕ of the Arabian Peninsula, and which currently corresponds to two large states: the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman. This ensemble is geographically bounded by the Musandam Cape to the north, which is separated from Iran by the Strait of Hormuz, and by the great sandy desert of Rub-al-Khali to the west. It is also bordered by three seas: the Gulf of Arabia and the Gulf of Oman to the north, and the Arabian Sea to the east and south.
According to the first results, this project is interested in the first millennium B.C, which corresponds to the Iron Age (1200-300 B.C.). It’s during that period that Oman will experience a second profound upheaval in its social structures and way of life.
The reasons for this upheaval are multiple.
It is first from the Iron Age onwards that the use of the dromedary as a riding and transport animal is first significantly observed. While new studies indicate that the domestication of the dromedary may have occurred sometime before the beginning of the Iron Age (Magee 2015), there is no doubt that it constitutes the most important change in the animal economy in eastern Arabia (Magee 2004, 2014, 2015; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2007, 2008, 2012). Dromedaries can be employed for very long-distance trade overland. They are fast and make it possible to open new paths, through previously inaccessible arid areas. Contacts with powerful Mesopotamian and Persian neighbors, as far as the Levant region, were thus strengthened (Magee 2014; Yule 2014; Frenez, Genchi et al. 2021).
It is also certainly during this period that the hydraulic system of underground galleries called qanat in the Middle East and Iran, or falaj in Oman (plur. afalaj), was developed in Oman (Charbonnier 2011, 2017). This innovation, and its intense development during the second Iron Age (1000-600 BC), will allow a revival of oasis agriculture which had progressively declined during the Bronze Age under the effect of an increased phenomenon of aridification of the region from 2000 BC (Charbonnier 2015, 2017; Al-Tikriti 2010). This system, which consists of capturing water from the mountainous foothills and conducting it via pipes to cereal crops in palm groves, constitutes an obvious upheaval in the subsistence economy in an arid region like Oman. It also provoked the sedentarization of populations that were still most certainly semi-nomadic. Thus, from the beginning of the Iron Age, all of southeast Arabia experienced a process of intensification of settlements in the mountainous foothills and on the promontories of semi-desert areas, largely linked to the development of this irrigation system (Boucharlat and Salles 1984; Boucharlat and Lombard 1985; Magee 1999; Benoist 2008). Iron Age habitat sites are now found in all environments: from coastal areas to desert margins, and from mountainous foothills to valleys carved by wadis. These habitats are built of mud brick or dry stone, and can take the form of open or fortified villages (Karacic et al. 2018, 2020; Cleuziou and Tosi 2018; Boucharlat and Lombard 1985, 2001; Magee 2007).
In this context, evidence of a complex social hierarchy appears as well as a probable increased structuring of the territory from the second Iron Age (1000-600 BC). The emergence of fortified hilltop sites at this period, such as at Lizq (Kroll and Yule 2013) and Salut (Avanzini and Phillips 2010) in Oman, or at Masafi 2 (Benoist et al. 2012), Bithna 24 (Benoist 2005, 2007; Benoist et al. 2012b), or Muweilah (Karacic et al. 2018) in the UAE, confirms the emergence of strong local powers. The location of these fortified sites near oases, water sources, or along wadi and afalaj, thus allowing for control of hydraulic resources, attests to the importance of the capacity to capture water in the renewal of the oasis system that was taking place at this time. The presence of protected wells in the center of massive towers since the Bronze Age, such as at Salut, Hili, Bat or al-Moyassar for example, confirms the determining importance of this resource in a region that has no permanent watercourse.
The development of public architectures in the same period, also attests to specific places characterizing the emergence of a strong local political power at this period. This dynamic is materialized by the “pillared halls”, for example, found both at the sites of Mudhmar in the Adam region (Gernez et al. 2017a, 2017b) or at Muweilah in the emirate of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (Magee 2003), as well as building G of the Rumeilah site also in the United Arab Emirates (Boucharlat and Lombard 2001).
Buildings for religious purposes are sometimes associated with these pillared rooms. The latter thus testify that while the control of hydraulic resources seems a determining element in the structuring of the power that is being put in place, the religious fact is also prominent in the political legitimization of this power and in society in general (Benoist 2010). An example is the site of Bithna 44/50 in the United Arab Emirates, where an altar was discovered on a small promontory. It was accessed by a path, around which several altars built as chapels radiated (Benoist 2005, 2007). However, the most spectacular case is undoubtedly the site of Mudhmar, in the Adam region of Central Oman. There, in a building adjoining a pillared hall, a set of bronze weapons was uncovered, including in particular two complete quivers (Gernez et al. 2017a, 2017b).
Copper snakes are systematically found in these worship buildings, whether in the pillared rooms or in the associated altars. As major animal figure and characteristic of the rituals that took place in the Omani Peninsula during this period, the snake is represented on ceramics from this period, as well as on incense burners, or even in the form of clay or copper figurines. These snakes characterize the cultic, if not religious, vocation of these buildings and their importance in the life of Iron Age societies (Benoist 2007, 2012; Delassiaz 2012).
The image that emerges from this first half of the Iron Age is that of a society undergoing profound social, political and certainly territorial changes. The emergence of fortified high sites, falaj systems and the presence of weapons found in the context of habitats, give the impression of a society that was tightening its grip on water resources ; resources which were henceforth decisive in the renewal of the oasis system. This is also certainly the case for copper resources, which must be seen as a preponderant element of these profound changes during the first millennium BCE (Goy 2019), especially since iron ore does not yet exist in Oman at this period: this is an Iron Age without iron. Copper production and reduction sites are still very numerous at this period, and the importance of controlling supplies and distribution networks increases with the domestication of the dromedary, leading to an intensification of exchanges.
The discovery of a new height site in Oman must certainly be placed in this context. Whether it is a worship complex or a fortified site on high ground, its unusual location in the Omani Ja’alan, certainly makes it a site of primary importance in the Omani Peninsula. It is actually far from similar sites known in the United Arab Emirates or in Central Oman, and its settlement on the edge of a wadi a few kilometers from the coast makes it an important site to explore.

Historical background of the research

The Wadi Hasid site, in the Omani Ja’alan region, was identified during a survey in 2007 in the framework of the Join Hadd Project.
It has been the subject of a second visit in 2017 by Dr. Christophe Sévin and Dr. Guillaume Gernez. Consequently to this visit, an archaeological investigation project was submitted to the Ministry of Heritage and Culture of Oman, and validated by its director general Mr. Sultan Al-Bakri.
A first mission was thus held the following year, in 2018, by Dr. Christophe Sévin and M. Nicolas Gautier in order to carry out a first photogrammetric survey of the monument and a first series of aerial pictures by drone.
The campaign 2024 is the first archaeological mission of excavation lead by Eveha International under the direction of Christophe Sévin.