The ancient city of Al-Natah, inhabited between 2400 and 1500 BC, represents an early transition from a rural lifestyle to more complex urban settlements. A new study published in an open access journal PLOS ONE Guillaume Charlou of the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris and colleagues show that settlements in northern Arabia went through a phase of transition to urbanization between the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC.
The development of large urban settlements was an important step in the evolution of human civilization. This urbanization process proved difficult to study in northern Arabia; this was partly due to the region’s lack of well-preserved archaeological sites compared to better understood regions such as the Levant and Mesopotamia. But excavations in recent years have revealed extraordinary sites that shed light on the early stages of urbanization in northern Arabia.
Al-Nata: A Look at Bronze Age Life
In this study, Charloux and colleagues, B.C. It provides a detailed description of the Bronze Age city of Al-Natah in the province of Medina, inhabited between 2400 and 1500 BC. The city covered an area of approximately 1.5 hectares, including the central district and surrounding residential areas, surrounded by protective walls.
Clusters of graves represent a necropolis, and burial practices indicate some degree of social stratification. According to the authors’ estimates, about 500 people lived in the city. Al-Natah is similar in size and organization to other sites of similar age in northern Arabia, but these sites are smaller and less socio-politically complex than contemporary sites in the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Researchers suggest that Al-Natah represents a state of “low urbanization”, a transitional phase between mobile livestock farming and complex urban settlements. Archaeological evidence now shows that northern Arabia was dotted with small fortified cities during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, at a time when other regions show later stages of urbanization. Further excavations across Arabia will provide greater detail about the timing of this transition and the changes in social structure and architecture that accompanied it.
The authors add: “Archaeologists have discovered for the first time in northwestern Arabia a small Bronze Age city (2400-1300 BC) connected by an extensive network of fortifications, raising questions about the early development of local urbanism.”
Source: Port Altele
