Sunday, March 27, 2011
Rock Art Discovered this year at Tower 1148
Today after our survey work a visiting Italian rock art specialist, Angelo Fossati came to view the rock art that was recently discovered at Tower 1148. It was found by Kondo, a Japanese archeologist that had been on the team when we were at Bat, after the rain had come and this made the rock art easier to see. Angelo thought they were from the 1st century BC or newer. He showed us how to use a mirror to reflect shadow so that you can see the picture clearer.
Amateur archaeology in Bat - helping research locations of 5,000 year old tombs
On March 22 we packed up the Mitsubishi Pajero with backpacks, hiking boots, clothes and sticks, our Garmin GPS, and drove the 3 hours to Bat. Our friend Charlotte Cable, who had been one of the leaders of the University of Pennsylvania team that we had worked with two years before, had asked us to help her to register the locations of tombs located in and around Bat for her doctoral dissertation, which was going to systematically study the tombs and their locations relative to the known population centers. This would involve going out in teams, hiking on the mountains and the plains, and identifying the type of tombs, recording their locations, type of construction, size and type of stones used, whether these were reused from earlier tombs, and many other details needed for a complete study.
Charlotte briefed us on her overall study, the forms used to record the details of each tomb, and we had some supper and went to bed fairly early, as we had to rise next morning at 5AM in order to be breakfasted and ready to go by about 6AM. We did not make it by 6, it was 6:30 before we Bosch's managed to get into the 4-wheel drive vehicle to drive to the base of the mountains for the area we were going to cover that day. It started out as beautiful cool morning with temperatures in the low 70's, but by the time when we got our "second breakfast" break at 10AM it was in the 90's. We were each carrying 3 liters of water in our packs, and this was really needed.
Going up the mountains along the ridgelines, we often encountered tombs that were 90% gone, with just a few parts of walls remaining, but we had to document, measure, describe and photograph these for Charlotte's dissertation research. She and Ruth, a professional archaeologist from England, were with us this first day as we learned how to record the location with the GPS, describe and measure the tombs, collect any worked flints, ceramics, bits of bone or shell or metal that we found, and to describe tombs on the forms in the way Charlotte needed. Leslie and David found and recorded six tombs on the first day, and when we started for home after 1PM we were very hot and tired from climbing up an down the rocky mountain slopes, which were hazardous because of the many loose stones. We were so exhausted we hit the sack for several hours before getting up to prepare and eat some late lunch. Then we went to enter the data and pictures into the research database, which also took a lot of time, so we did not get it all done before we had supper and took Excedrin PM to get some sleep before our alarm went off at 5AM.
Our second day went better, we were ready by 6, and this time we took our walking sticks with us, knowing they would be useful for balancing on the rough mountain slopes. This time we started out on a ridge where Ruth the end of the previous day had discovered a huge structure containing several tombs: It turned out to be a previously undiscovered tower platform, about 26 meters in diameter, sighted on the peak overlooking ancient Bat! This is the seventh tower so far discovered at Bat, all round structures dating between 2,000 and 3,000 BC. We then found and recorded another seven tombs before returning to our house at 1PM, again hot but not quite as exhausted as the first day.
Our third day we spent on the plain, starting at the tower where David had worked for Charlotte two years before, and we spread out in a line 20 meters apart to cover the whole area. When anyone spotted an old stone wall or a well, they would stop the forward movement until the feature was duly studied and recorded, and then we would continue on. We found four old wells, some of them quite intact and lined with good stone walls, but all the wells were dry and several had had garbage thrown in.
As we had heard, an Italian expert in rock art arrived at 11AM, so we broke our survey activity and Charlotte showed him the pictures that had been discovered after a recent rain on one of the towers in Bat. He was very knowledgeable on this field, took a lot of pictures, and said that these were not of the oldest style of rock art, and probably were 3,000 years old or less.
Our last day we took separate cars as we had to leave for Muscat by 1:30 PM and had friends coming for cocktails that evening, so we would have to leave the mountains by 10:30 or so. We were covering one edge of Charlotte's area of study, so Charlotte and Ruth covered one ridgeline and we covered another one about half a mile to the east, keeping each other in sight most of the time. The first tombs that we found were small ones from a later (Wadi Suq) period, but as we came to higher points along the ridge we found the oldest Hafit-style tombs, including one that had the clear remains of its ancient entrance. Then we rushed home, recorded the day's data in Charlotte's database, and quickly packed up the car for the return trip to Muscat. It had been a really good educational trip for us, and hopefully the 25 or so tombs that we added to Charlotte's database will be helpful to her.
Charlotte briefed us on her overall study, the forms used to record the details of each tomb, and we had some supper and went to bed fairly early, as we had to rise next morning at 5AM in order to be breakfasted and ready to go by about 6AM. We did not make it by 6, it was 6:30 before we Bosch's managed to get into the 4-wheel drive vehicle to drive to the base of the mountains for the area we were going to cover that day. It started out as beautiful cool morning with temperatures in the low 70's, but by the time when we got our "second breakfast" break at 10AM it was in the 90's. We were each carrying 3 liters of water in our packs, and this was really needed.
Going up the mountains along the ridgelines, we often encountered tombs that were 90% gone, with just a few parts of walls remaining, but we had to document, measure, describe and photograph these for Charlotte's dissertation research. She and Ruth, a professional archaeologist from England, were with us this first day as we learned how to record the location with the GPS, describe and measure the tombs, collect any worked flints, ceramics, bits of bone or shell or metal that we found, and to describe tombs on the forms in the way Charlotte needed. Leslie and David found and recorded six tombs on the first day, and when we started for home after 1PM we were very hot and tired from climbing up an down the rocky mountain slopes, which were hazardous because of the many loose stones. We were so exhausted we hit the sack for several hours before getting up to prepare and eat some late lunch. Then we went to enter the data and pictures into the research database, which also took a lot of time, so we did not get it all done before we had supper and took Excedrin PM to get some sleep before our alarm went off at 5AM.
Our second day went better, we were ready by 6, and this time we took our walking sticks with us, knowing they would be useful for balancing on the rough mountain slopes. This time we started out on a ridge where Ruth the end of the previous day had discovered a huge structure containing several tombs: It turned out to be a previously undiscovered tower platform, about 26 meters in diameter, sighted on the peak overlooking ancient Bat! This is the seventh tower so far discovered at Bat, all round structures dating between 2,000 and 3,000 BC. We then found and recorded another seven tombs before returning to our house at 1PM, again hot but not quite as exhausted as the first day.
Our third day we spent on the plain, starting at the tower where David had worked for Charlotte two years before, and we spread out in a line 20 meters apart to cover the whole area. When anyone spotted an old stone wall or a well, they would stop the forward movement until the feature was duly studied and recorded, and then we would continue on. We found four old wells, some of them quite intact and lined with good stone walls, but all the wells were dry and several had had garbage thrown in.
As we had heard, an Italian expert in rock art arrived at 11AM, so we broke our survey activity and Charlotte showed him the pictures that had been discovered after a recent rain on one of the towers in Bat. He was very knowledgeable on this field, took a lot of pictures, and said that these were not of the oldest style of rock art, and probably were 3,000 years old or less.
Our last day we took separate cars as we had to leave for Muscat by 1:30 PM and had friends coming for cocktails that evening, so we would have to leave the mountains by 10:30 or so. We were covering one edge of Charlotte's area of study, so Charlotte and Ruth covered one ridgeline and we covered another one about half a mile to the east, keeping each other in sight most of the time. The first tombs that we found were small ones from a later (Wadi Suq) period, but as we came to higher points along the ridge we found the oldest Hafit-style tombs, including one that had the clear remains of its ancient entrance. Then we rushed home, recorded the day's data in Charlotte's database, and quickly packed up the car for the return trip to Muscat. It had been a really good educational trip for us, and hopefully the 25 or so tombs that we added to Charlotte's database will be helpful to her.
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