Sultanate of Oman
Khor al Jarāma – 2020

Khor Jarama 2020

This third campaign of excavation on the site of Khor Jarama has allowed to uncover a big monument associated with three structures (pits/tombs) located around.
This tomb is a circular dry-stone monument, surrounded by a stone crown, of approximately 6.70 m in diameter and 1.35 m high.
In the center of the latter was the burial chamber which is accessed from the top. Three distinct phases of successive deposits have been highlighted. Bioapatite datings gave for these deposits a chronology stretching from the end of the Neolithic to the end of the Iron age.
The first deposit, which also dates the construction of the tomb, is dated from the end of the 4th millennium, at the end of the Neolithic, between 3360 and 3103 cal. BC.
The second reuse of the burial chamber of this tomb occurs a few centuries later and is dated for its part from the Umm an-Nar period, between 2476 and 2306 cal. BC.
Finally, the last use of the tomb appears as fortuitous and occurs about two millennia later, between 388 and 206 cal. BC.

Two graves/pits have also been excavated in the northeast part of the tomb.
The first was certainly looted but has allowed to uncover a seleuco-parthe vase associated with an iron element. This vase was pierced by a small hole and, according to the protocol in force, samples for physico-chemical analysis were therefore taken at different places in the filling of the vase. These analyses will be done next year in aim to define if this vase has been used for post-burial libation deposits.
The main discovery of this year, remains however an equid burial in the adjacent pit. To date, it appears that no other equid grave is known in Oman. This burial is dated also from the end of the Iron age, between 347 and 56 cal. BC, and can be thus associated with the last deposit inside the chamber: it testify probably of the funeral of an horseman and the killing of his mount to accompany him in death. It thus gives to this necropolis a character of high importance as it can be linked with the same camel and equids burial rituals observed in United Arab Emirates on the sites of Mlheia and Ed-Dûr.

Finally, in aim to confirm the chronology during the end of the Neolithic of the tomb 1 excavated in 2018, a new bioapatite dating have been done this year: the result obtained, between 3510 and 3339 cal. BC confirm the previous date and that this tomb is the first case of a monumental funerary architecture during this Neolithic period.