The majority of the bones were from cattle, while there were others from goats, which the team says is “among the earliest attestation of domestic cattle and goat in northern Arabia”. Photo: Royal Commission for AlUlaĬompared to the other horn chamber, this site held fewer specimens, which appear to have been offered in several phases and over the generations, rather than during one ceremony. There, the team discovered a chamber filled with horn and skull fragments dating back to between 52 BC.Īrchaeologist Melissa Kennedy unearths the first horn found at her team’s excavation site, 55km east of AlUla. The second study, led by Kennedy of the University of Sydney in 2019, looked at a mustatil nestled deep within dense sandstone canyons east of AlUla. The reconstruction of these ritual practices highlights, the process through which the individual or smaller scale social component interacts with the wider pastoral, tribal group," Abu-Azizeh tells The National. “The data of the horn chamber mustatil sheds an entirely new light on the complexity of the ritual practices performed by these early pastoralists. It is thought these groups could have been part of a wider pastoral tribal community. During the ritual, individual nomads may have taken it in turns to enter through a narrow doorway and a small antechamber to leave their gifts, on behalf of their social groups. Known as the "horn chamber", a space spanning 3.25 metres by 0.8 metres sits at the western end of a mustatil, which measures 40 metres by 12 metres. The team believes pastoral nomads may have left the fragments at the site during a single ceremony, as an offering to a deity.Ī map showing the mustatil: SU300 represents the eastern wall of the structure, while SU200 marks a stone cairn and SU100 identifies the platform containing the horn chamber. Most of the horns and skulls – 95 per cent – were from domestic species including goats, cattle and sheep, alongside others such as gazelles, Nubian ibex and the now-extinct aurochs.īeneath the bones was a thin bed of twigs, placed ritualistically on the sandstone surface. The team describe the site as “a unique and unprecedented assemblage in the context of north Arabian Neolithic” history that represented a “testimony of complex and sophisticated ritual practices”. The horns were predominantly from male animals. Researchers found horns from several domestic and wild species, including goats and aurochs, north-east of AlUla. The team found a chamber filled with “an exceptional discovery” of horns and skull fragments, packed densely together in a layer rising 30cm from the floor. In 2018, Abu-Azizeh led a University of Oxford excavation of a mustatil to the north-east of AlUla. The two studies – led by Wael Abu-Azizeh, of the Archeorient Laboratory and Lyon 2 University in France, and Melissa Kennedy, of the University of Sydney in Australia, respectively – have both been peer-reviewed. The abundance of domestic species found among the animal offerings made at the sites imply the presence of a pastoral nomadic community, who may have created the mustatils as a way of building social cohesion or marking territory.Įxcavations since 2018 have indicated that the structures may represent one of the world’s oldest pilgrimage traditions. Researchers believe Neolithic people may have embarked on pilgrimages to these sites, where they conducted rituals.Ĭlockwise from top, the platform containing the horn chamber details of the horn chamber the site was found in north-west Saudi Arabia. These are large, open-air rectangular structures with low stone walls. The findings are centred on 1,600 prehistoric stone structures spread across northern Arabia known as mustatils. When it comes to archaeology, AlUla may perhaps be best known for the Nabataean tombs at Hegra – however, these are just the tip of the iceberg.Ī recent pair of archaeological excavations have unveiled fascinating new findings dating much further back, indicating the region’s Neolithic inhabitants conducted “complex and sophisticated ritual practices” more than 7,000 years ago.
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