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Cleuziou - Prehistory of Arabia Expert Dies

Edited by Maha Karim

Sunday, 11 October 2009 11:46

The Historic Environment Department at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) has announced the recent death of Professor Serge Cleuziou, doctor in oriental archaeology from Sorbonne University, Paris. He died in Paris on Wednesday 7th October 2009 after a long illness.

In 1972 he joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research) and was elected professor of oriental archaeology in the University of Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) in 2003. During his career he worked on various periods, but mainly on the Neolithic and Bronze Age in France, Yugoslavia, Greece, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen.

Serge Cleuziou devoted some 30 years of his career to the archaeology of Arabia. He carried out important research programs on the Bronze and Iron Age of Tureng Tepe in north-eastern Iran, and on the copper supply of Sumerian Mesopotamia, with chemical sampling programs and ancient copper mines surveys in Iran, Afghanistan and Oman.

As Director of the French Archaeological Mission to Abu Dhabi he conducted important surveys and excavations in Abu Dhabi at Jebel Hafit and Hili. This work included the important excavations at Hili 8, which was the first detailed investigation of an Early Bronze age settlement in the region using modern archaeological methods. This third millennium BC site revealed a mud-brick tower surrounded by a moat and series of other buildings. Archaeobotanical remains discovered during the excavations provide some of the earliest evidence in south-east Arabia for the cultivation of cereals, namely wheat and barley, as well as evidence for the cultivation of the date palm.

The work at Hili 8 was the result of a joint venture between the former Department of Antiquities and Tourism (now ADACH), the French Department des sciences humaines et sociales, the Ministère des relations extérieures and the URA no.30 of the Centre de recherches archéologiques of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

The data obtained from Hili were used by Cleuziou to compare with evidence from other settlements like Bat and Maysar in Oman. This helped to establish a theoretical model of settlement organisation for oasis economies during the Early Bronze Age.

Professor Cleuziou subsequently joined Professor Maurizio Tosi, professor of prehistory at the University of Bologna, Italy, for a major long term research program at Ra’s al-Jinz, working in the Ja’alan area of Oman. The fruits of this project were many important and influential articles, as well as, in 2007, the publication of the monograph “In the Shadow of the Ancestors – The Prehistoric Foundations of the Early Arabian Civilization in Oman”, published by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture in Oman.

In recent years his primary research interest was the relationship between social evolution and climatic change in the arid lands of Arabia. Professor Cleuziou inspired and influenced a whole generation of archaeologists working within south-east Arabia.

Global Arab Network