February 23, 2011 Ras Al Hadd to Sinaw



Ras Al Jinz after 1 week of excavation



Up and out of Turtle Beach Resort by 8am. We continued our archaeological tour under Alex and climbed the escarpment to see the Um Nar tombs at the top, as well as a few previously excavated buildings from the later Wadi Suq period. This site is extremely rich in terms of Bronze Age Archaeology, and at one point it is estimated 1,000 people lived here. There was extensive copper smelting going on at that time, and small pieces of copper could be seen on the ground today. We saw a piece of copper ring, a nail and Alex yesterday had found a small copper seal. Other interesting material from Ras al Jinz that show the trade routes include an ivory comb from India and an Anadara shell with Kohl in it. The same shell and Kohl had been found in Ur, showing that it had been exported from OMAN where the shell is native. Our beady eyes noted that still on the ground today are many pieces of worked shells, both conus and olives, which they used for rings and necklaces.

Conus ring under manufacture

The copper was coming from Maysar, near Samad as Shan, where we will go to next. We had lunch at a Tourist Restaurant at Ibra which had a nice buffet for 4 omr per person. We continued on to Samad taking a cross road from Ibra. Hard as we looked, we could not find the site that in the guide book had one description, but the GPS coordinates had anothe location too far away to make sense. So after a couple of hours of driving around and asking people we have given up and headed to Sinaw. Sinaw has 3 hotels, perhaps to accomodate the influx of people for the Thursday market. We got a room in the newest hotel, which is a few kilometers out of the town, for 15 omr. We then drove into town to check things out and confirm where to go tomorrow. We saw many Omani men all dressed up with Khunjars, camels sticks and the formal mussar head gear. Many bedouin ladies are here in their bright clothes with the black net cover.