The Role of Adummatu among the Early Arabian Trade Routes at the Dawn of the Southern Arabian Cultures

Abstract This paper aims to both introduce the most recent efforts of the Italian Archaeological Mission in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (MAIRAS), at Dūmat al-Jandal (the ancient Adummatu) addressed to the definition of the role of the ancient urban oasis within the early Arabian caravan routes and to discuss how the emerging of the early caravan trade could have had a part in the genesis of the Southern Arabia cultures. Following a geomorphological approach (based on the detection of the paleo-landscape and hydrographical features), after remote sensing analyses and field surveys in the al-Jawf region aimed to find plausible stopovers endowed with wells along the caravan routes, passageways can be suggested in order to define the links between Northern Arabia, the Levant and the Mesopotamian alluvium. Since the written sources are particularly rare for the whole Arabian Peninsula trade network at its early stages, this paper mainly intends to investigate the archaeological evidence (material culture and architectonic evidence) from both the historical core of Dūmat al-Jandal and the al-Jawf region. Until now, several material culture classes allow to suppose a long tradition in caravan contacts between the Assyrian Adummatu (as well as the Nabataean Dūmah and the Roman Dumata) and the surrounding regions, such as Taymā‘ and Assyria, in the first half of the I millennium BC, and the Levantine regions from the Nabataean to the Roman/Byzantine periods. Furthermore, a contextualisation of the ancient Adummatu within the trade network of the early I millennium BC Arabian cultures will be discussed, by taking into account the early stages of the Arabian trade routes at the beginning of the I millennium BC and its role in the emerging of the Southern Arabia cultures.