Global Arab Network | UAE - New Discoveries at Al Shuaib

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UAE - New Discoveries at Al Shuaib

Global Arab Network - - Maha Karim

Tuesday, 09 June 2009 00:59

Sticking firmly to its mission in safeguarding national cultural heritage, and engaging civil society in its activities within Abu Dhabi, the Historic Environment Department of the Abu Dhabi Authority for culture and heritage (ADACH) started recently to communicate and interact with the public, covering various activities with special focus on culture and heritage.

Abu Dhabi citizens played a vitally distinguished role in reporting several sites in the desert, which sites were unearthed, then registered as new ADACH archaeological areas. UAE citizens were also actively helpful in handing over several ancient pieces they found to ADACH. In this context, the Historic Environment Department has recently carried out surveys and excavations in different parts in Abu Dhabi, in which civil society played an outstandingly constructive role, especially in desolate desert areas.

Among these surveys, the one carried out at sites in Al Shuaib, previously reported by a national to have archaeological findings. Subsequently, the archaeological Team carried on its surveys and excavations on 1/ 2/ 2009, at Al Ain, along the Al Ain to Dubai highway, where the team undertook data collection and recording of archaeological sites all over the valleys and dunes in that area, as a preliminary step for listing all these sites in a single database at ADACH.

Site finding are worthy of mentioning: a pair of silver earring, two bronze coins, a small ring, stone equipments used as hummers, and pieces of stoves that may have been used for cooking beside which animal fossils were found. Fractures of potteries were identifies, after being collected from sites surveyed, as well as granite fragments, which probably mark attempts to carve granite pieces during Late Stone Age, casting shadows over the possibility of the existence of Late stone Age sites at this period, perhaps buried beneath the sand or near it. Among the findings discovered during surveying were fossils of ostrich eggshells.

After comparing surveyed pottery fractures with other similar pottery fractures, it was found that the former group dates back to the Late Islamic epoch. These fractures belong to tribes used to cut through many areas throughout ancient UAE during the winter searching for food and water. They used to pitch their tents only for a very short period of time at different sites, which sites were found similar to others surveyed previously by ADACH’s team in past years, like Mahdar Al Meri, Bedou’ Al Shuaiber located in the south of Al Khatm area, and other parts at Al Khazna, Bukheesa forests, and many others previously documented in preliminary surveys at several areas in Abu Dhabi.

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