Bahrains oldtidshovedstad gennem 4000 år
1957; Volume: 7; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês
10.7146/kuml.v7i7.97660
ISSN2446-3280
Autores Tópico(s)Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History
ResumoThe Hundred-Meter SectionThe "tell" of Ras al-Qala'a lies in the centre of the northern coast of Bahrain Island in the Persian Gulf, at the head of a shallow bay. It receives its name from the 'qala'a', or fort, which crowns the mound and which was occupied, and perhaps built, by the Portuguese in the early 16th century. Within the crumbled walls of this fort the Danish Archeological Bahrain-Expedition each year establishes its camp, and in the cool of the evening its members, taking the air upon the ramparts, have a bird's eye view of the holes in the ground in which their days are spent:It is an impressive view from the ruined ramparts. Far away on the right, at the horn of the great bay, the low white houses of Moharraq stretch along the shore; closer in cluster the wind-towers and minarets of the capital Manama. On the left, beyond and above the acres of palm-tops, the coast of Arabia can be seen on the clearer days, stretching endlessly towards the north and, as the evening draws in, the red glow of the spill-gas flames of the Arabian oilfields begins to stain the heavens all along the western horizon.The mound of Ras al-Qala'a is surrounded, on the three landward sides, by miles of date-palm plantations, and it is only by reason of the height of the mound above the surrounding countryside, and the height of the fort ramparts above the mound, that we can see the desert and the gardens and the township - and the clustering thousands of the gravemounds - beyond the palm-belt. But these date plantations terminate abruptly where the Qala'a mound begins. The mound is large, some 400 yards from north to south and twice that distance from east to west, but low by Mesopotamian standards, not more than 15 meters high. It is composed entirely of the ruins and debris of the considerable city which has at various periods occupied the site, and its comparatively modest height is due to the fact that this city was built of stone and not, as in Mesopotamia, of mud-brick. Stone buildings survive longer than buildings of mud-brick, and, whereas a brick building, once fallen, is levelled off and a new building erected above it, in the case of a stone building the materials are often salvaged, even foundation walls being frequently dug up, and the stone reused in the next building phase. Consequently a stone-built city climbs upwards on its own ruins much more slowly than one of more fragile materials. And, incidentally, the persistent quarrying for stone makes the identification and interpretation of occupational levels much more hazardous.The interpretation of occupational levels is necessarily of the highest importance to discovering the history of a town site, particularly where, as in Bahrain, the history of the area, the sequence of event and cultures, is initially completely unknown. It is therefore one of the rules of the game that, as soon as the first soundings have shown that a site does in fact contain early material, an extensive trench should be dug, going down to bedrock or to virgin soil. This trench should be dug in such a way that everything found in each layer of occupational debris is kept separate, and keyed in to a drawing of the trench wall which will show every change in structure or composition of the soil, which denotes a change in the type of habitation of the site. Such a drawing of a vertical section through the mound will be capable of giving the complete history of the portions of the site through which it runs. Here can be seen protruding walls and the lines of stamped earth or clay floors, marking phases of building. Above the floors will lie the stratified debris and dark earth accumulated during settled occupation. Above these again will lie the jumbled stone and mortar left when the buildings fell to ruin or were pulled down, with perhaps the thick charcoal layer that denotes destruction by fire. This may be followed by a new building phase, or by the drifts of windblown sand which tell of a site left desolate. In the section will be seen, too, the pits and trenches dug for storage, for graves or for stone-quarrying, but in general the layers will lie roughly horizontally, and it will of course always be true, that the lower levels must precede, chronologically, the levels above.The objects recovered from each of these separate layers, bones and beads, worked stone and metal, and above all potsherds, fall similarly into a chronological series, and can give a picture, from bottom to top, of the vicissitudes of the site. A gradual development from one pottery type to another will tell of long, settled and comparatively undisturbed occupation, whereas an abrupt change in pottery and artifacts will denote a gap in occupation or the supersession, probably by no means peaceful, of one culture by another. It is among these collections, too, that one may hope to find the imported objects which may, by comparison with already known and dated cultures elsewhere, be able to put an absolute date to a level and illustrate a cultural connection with some other region.It is important, however, to realise the limitations of such a section trench. In the nature of things it cannot be of very great width, and therefore the horizontal area uncovered is limited. Consequently it will rarely uncover a complete building, or provide a broad view of any one particular phase of occupation. For this it will be necessary to supplement the section trench by large-scale area digging, often by widening the initial trench at points of particular interest.The procedure above outlined has been consistently followed at Ras al-Qala'a. The original sounding 1) showed the site to have been occupied at least as early as the middle of the First Millennium BC, and revealed a building of unusual interest and massive construction. This original sounding has since been widened by an extensive 'area-excavation' together with two small soundings down to bedrock which showed that the occupation of the site went back probably to the Third Millennium BC 2). In 1955 a start was accordingly made on the driving of a section trench in from the northern slope of the city mound on the very edge of the sea. The trench ran due south and its commencing point was chosen at a place where recent high tides had washed away part of the mound, exposing two blocks of worked limestone.There are several reasons for commencing a section trench on the edge, rather than in the middle, of a city mound. The mound is normally lower there and there is less earth to move, while such earth as is moved is easier to dispose of. But chiefly, such a trench should at an early stage reveal what type of fortification wall, if any, the city possessed, and such fortifications, interesting enough in themselves, can be followed fairly easily to a gateway. Gateways were important places in early eastern city life and can be expected to produce quantities of dateable material. The only disadvantage of digging inwards from the outskirts of a mound is that, if the city has expanded gradually from an inner nucleus, the section trench will not for some time reach the earliest periods of occupation. We are far from certain that we have yet reached the earliest city at the Qala'a, even after three years' work.Expecting fortifications, we were hardly surprised to find that the two limestone blocks already exposed proved to be facing blocks of a well-built wall, and the sharp curvature of this wall was soon explained when a more massive wall, 2.5 meters thick, was discovered behind it, and the first wall was seen to belong to a turret abutting on the wall (Fig. 1). Pottery recovered from the occupation layer of the turret already showed a considerable quantity of multicoloured glazed ware and some sherds of the green celadon china characteristic of the Sung Dynasty of China (960-1250 AD).The main defensive wall stood solidly on bedrock to a height of 3 meters. It was of unshaped stone set in gypsum cement, a type of concrete, and had originally been faced with large and finely cut blocks of limestone from the island of Jida off the Bahrain coast. Most of these facing stones had been removed, only the lowest courses remaining, and many stones of the type of those surviving could be seen incorporated in the walls of the 'Portuguese' fort further inland.Inside the wall, but at a level with the top of the surviving portion, the section trench uncovered the floors and lower parts of the walls of finely constructed buildings. The pottery found in association with these floors was of the same type as that from the turret floor and will be discussed in more detail later.On digging below this level it could be seen that the buildings had been very solidly constructed, the walls resting on foundations which stretched 3 meters down to rest on bedrock. But cut into by these foundation walls were the walls of a previous building phase, of a completely different plan and orientation from that above. The pottery from this earlier phase, too, was completely different from that above, being characterized by thin-walled shallow bowls either of a gray-green glazed ware, or else with a burnished red or black wash.As the trench progressed towards the south it became clear that it was following, on the upper building level, a street running inwards from the turret, and bordered on both sides by substantial buildings. 18 meters from the defensive wall this street debouched into a paved square. And when the trench was widened to investigate this feature it became clear that this square formed the central point of a completely symmetrical complex of streets and buildings. The square was exactly quadrilateral, with its sides running precisely northsouth and east-west, and it sloped inwards from all sides to a circular drain in the middle. From the centre of each side a short street led off in each of the four cardinal directions. The east and west streets were not followed; but those to the north and the south were practically blocked, after only 7 meters length, by a room built out from the east side of the street, leaving only a narrow alley which, in the case of the north street, led up to the fortification wall at the point where the turret was situated (Fig. 2).In the course of the 1955 campaign the southern alley was not followed in its full length. The rooms which occupied the quadrants between the streets were just as geometrically and symmetrically constructed as the streets. They showed signs of varying use. One, which lay so close to the present surface that floor and walls had only partially survived, had an earthenware drainpipe beneath its floor which led, cutting through a stone threshold of the previous building phase, to a seepage tank below the street outside. The next room had a gypsum cement floor with two cement-lined pits symmetrically placed at each end. Two of the rooms were equipped for the collection of date juice; the walls were · coated with clay plaster and the floor, also of clay, consisted of baulks and channels running the length of the room and sloping gently to a tank, in one case of cement, in the other clay-lined, lying below floor level at the lower end of the room. Rooms of this nature are still in use for the same purpose, the baskets of dates being piled up at the upper end of the room, and their own weight gradually pressing out the juice of the fruit, which runs down the channels to the tank.The reason for abandonment of this dwelling area was not apparent. In one of the rooms immediately south of the fortification wall there was considerable evidence of fire, a thick layer of ash, and large quantities of the collapsed roof, which had been made of alternate layers of matting and bitumen, a much more weather-proof ceiling construction than that used at the present day in Bahrain. But while fire had clearly destroyed this room, the destruction had been very localised, and there was no evidence of violent destruction of the remainder. On the contrary, there was some evidence of a gradual deterioration of the strict, almost military, ordering of the quarter. Post holes in the north street leading from the square showed that a temporary building, probably one of the local palm-leaf huts, had been at some time erected there, apparently, to judge by the number of quernstones lying in and around it, a mill-wright's shop. And in a corner of the square itself the blackened stones of a hearth suggested a period when even the square itself was taken into use as a camping-place.Our belief that we had found the fortification wall, albeit a late one, of the city, and were digging the ruins of the city, clearly Islamic, which lay behind it, received a rude shock when, at the beginning of the next season's work in 1956 we continued the line of the section towards the south. Almost at once a new fortification wall was struck, at the end of the south alley and precisely symmetrical with the northern fortification wall at the end of the north alley. When a corresponding turret was found to the south of this southern wall it became clear that we had not been digging in the city at all, but in an isolated fort, or rather a fortified residence - presumably a palace - between the city proper and the seashore. Further digging along the line of the southern wall in that and the following season identified two corner towers and enabled the presumed plan of the fort to be worked out in some detail (Fig. 3).The section trench had now been driven some 59 meters southward from the seashore, and the prehistoric city had not yet been reached. It was now continued onward, in a width of 5 meters.Within the fortified palace it had only proved possible to make two small trial sondages down to bedrock along the line of the section, as it was not desired to destroy the later buildings. But south of the fort, and at the same Islamic level, an unbuilt area stretched for some distance, and here it was possible to carry the section trench down to bedrock over a stretch of 8 meters (63-71 meters South). In the whole of this length no remains of buildings were found, except for one wall, running obliquely across the excavation. There were also, in the upper levels, three lslamic burials which were left undisturbed. The 5 meters depth of soil was divided horizontally, in accordance with changes in colour and texture of the soil, into 20 different levels, and all potsherds and the artifacts from each of these levels were kept separate and later analysed and compared. Details will be given later, but at this point it may be said that two complete breaks in the types of pottery found occurred, below the 6th level, and below the 16th. Levels 1-6 contained the lslamic pottery already familiar from the fortified palace, mainly characterized by polychrome glazed ware and green Chinese celadon. Level 7-16 formed a deposit 2.2-2.5 meters deep, with very homogeneous pottery, the most common types of which were small thinwalled bowls covered with grey glaze or with red or black wash, frequently burnished (Figs. 4-5). In level 7 a small terracotta female head (Fig. 6) was found, and in level 10 a portion of a rouletted black-on-red Attic bowl. Levels 17-20 again showed a completely new list of pottery types. The number both of sherds and of types was small and many of the sherds were wave-washed, not unnaturally considering that the final layers 19-20 comprised the sand of the original beach immediately overlying bedrock and less than a meter above mean sea level. These levels were characterized by a preponderance of thick honeycoloured or caramel-coloured sherds, including a number of narrow bases and pedestals (Fig. 7).At this point it seemed as though a beginning had been made towards establishing a historical sequence. Three successive "cultures", each clearly separated from the others, had been identified, and there seemed good possibilities of dating fairly closely the upper two of them. But the city for which we were looking seemed as far off as ever. At the period of the "lslamic-palace" levels the area just dug had been open ground surrounding the fortified palace. At the time of the "glazed-bowl" levels there had perhaps been scattered walls and houses here, but nothing that could be called a city. And at the time of the "caramelware" levels the area had been foreshore and nothing else. And yet the initial sondage in the centre of the city had shown substantial buildings whose levels were characterized by red-ridged pottery of a type which appeared nowhere in the three cultures which here overlay bedrock, but which was found in the Barbar temples in a context which suggested a Third Millennium BC date 3).The 1956 season was drawing to a close, and the fasting month of Ramadan was approaching. It was decided to jump 25 meters and sink a final sondage on the line of the section, 99-104 meters from its commencement at high-water mark. It soon became clear that this pit had completely different characteristics from those previously dug along the section. Here 19 levels were distinguished.Levels 1-6 contained mainly the pottery characteristic of the "Islamic-palace" phase, but amongst it were smaller quantities of the typical pottery of the "glazed-bowl" and "caramel-ware" phases, and even - at the two extremes - sherds of the red-ridged "Barbar" ware of the Third Millennium BC and of the blue-and-white Chinese Ming porcelain which characterizes the Portuguese occupation of the 16th century AD. This mixture was not difficult to account for. The section had at this stage reached the immediate vicinity of the moat of the 'Portuguese' fort, and the upper levels here were clearly composed of upcast earth from the digging of this moat.With level 7 the contents of the layers changed abruptly, but not, as might have been expected, to those of the "glazed-bowl" phase, but to the typical "caramel-ware". The "glazed-bowl" phase proved, in fact, to be entirely missing here."Caramel-ware" persisted until level 10, but with level 11 the pottery type changed again, and here, at last, came the typical red-ridged "Barbar" ware in large quantities. It will be described later, but its main characteristics were unmistakeable (Fig. 8). Almost 95 % of all sherds were of thin brick-red grit-tempered ware, and over 75 % of these bore the unmistakeable "Barbar" ridges, while the typical "Barbar" rims occurred in large numbers. Together with the uppermost "Barbar" layers came the first building level, a corner of a substantial house of stone construction with a threshold entrance (Fig. 9). As the levels went down the pottery gradually changed character. "Chain-ridged" ware, in which the parallel horizontal ridges were not even but were regularly depressed to form a chainlike pattern, appeared and gradually increased in proportion to the normal ridged ware until it became, by level 16, the only type of ridged ware found (Fig. 10). At the same time the proportion of red ware dropped, and brown and buff ware comprised up to 40 % of all sherds. It was clear that the "chain-ridged" phase develops gradually into the true "Barbar" phase, unlike the abrupt transitions between the other phases identified. The boundary between the two phases is thus indeterminate. At level 17 a new building phase was found with a stone wall running parallel to the main section, containing a doorway besides which lay a hollowed hinge-stone (Fig. 9).The very great difference between the cultural content of the portion of the section dug to bedrock at 63-71 meters from high-water mark and that dug at 99-104 meters suggested strongly that between the two lay the boundary of the "Barbar" period city, probably a fortification wall. Consequently, at the beginning of the 1957 season the section trench was continued backwards from the last hole dug for a distance of 14 meters (85-99 m S).Considerably more traces of buildings were found in this excavation than previously in the area south of the Islamic palace. Just below the surface (level 1) lay a cement water channel running the length of the excavation and clearly contemporary with, or later than, the Portuguese occupation of the fort. Half a meter further down (level 5), in the eastern side of the excavation only, lay the floors and stumps of walls of buildings dated, by the pottery found at their floor levels, to the period of the Islamic palace. To the west these buildings ended abruptly, cut away, as it appeared, by the edge of a large pit dug in Portuguese times apparently to obtain building stone. Immediately below this level the defensive wall of the "Barbar-period" city began to appear, a massive work of gypsum-concrete, 3.5 meters thick, running obliquely across the excavation from ESE to WNW .. Extension of the area excavated to both sides along the line of the wall showed that, to the east, the remains of the wall survived almost to the surface and had been incorporated into the buildings of the "lslamic-palace" period. To the west the pit dug in Portuguese times went ever deeper, and ended by taking a considerable bite out of the fortification wall itself.While the general direction and core construction of the wall were clear, it had been exposed - at least on the outer, northern face - to such a degree of weathering by nature, quarrying by man and alteration to suit later building phases that it was not easy to gain an idea of its original appearance. It did not go down to bedrock, but its inner face, consisting of a dry-stone wall, descended to within 120 cms. of bedrock, 80 cms. lower than its outer face. This would suggest - though only a section through the fortifications can confirm - that the dry-stone portion of the ramparts forms the earliest phase, and that the concrete outer face was added later, at a time when the ground level, both within and without the wall, had risen considerably.Outside - to the north of - the wall the first 85 cms. of "lslamic-palace" period remains were immediately succeeded by 1.8 meters of "glazed-bowl" levels. These overlay the floor level of a building phase characterized, by walls abutting onto the outer face of the city wall, which had clearly already at that period lost its original facing stones. One of these walls contained a doorway with a cut stone threshold of exactly the same type as that discovered in the "glazed-bowl" phase below the lslamic palace. A meter above this floor level a pointer was given to the age of these levels by the discovery of a sherd of coarse straw-coloured pottery with, inscribed upon it, part of a name in Greek characters, - παις (Fig. 11). Below the "glazed bowl" levels, and still 70 cms. above the foot of the wall, pure "Barbar" levels commenced, and these continued, developing gradually into the "chain-ridged" levels, until bedrock was reached.Within - to the south of - the wall, the succession of levels was entirely different. Below the Islamic house lay a sterile layer of green sand 10 cms. thick, and below this lay, not more than 2 meters below the surface, levels containing the red-ridged sherds of the pure "Barbar" period. The sterile layer sealing the "Barbar" levels was broken through time and again. A shallow excavation of the "caramel-ware" period dipped down to rob part of the wall forming the upper "Barbar" building level, before continuing deeper to the south in the thick levels found the previous year. Through the edge of the sloping "caramel-ware" excavation a grave had been dug, containing one of the pitch-covered "bath-tub" coffins of the same type as those previously discovered in the central area of the Qala'a city 4). The coffin contained an undisturbed skeleton but no grave goods (Fig. 12). The type can, however, be dated fairly accurately by the contents of those previously discovered to the 7th century BC. These two excavations were in their turn dug into by the quarrying depredations of the "lslamic palace" and the "Portuguese" periods, with the final result that, although the layer of sterile sand in fact sealed over half the area excavated, it did not appear at all on the main section, and only for a distance of 20 cms. on one of the cross-sections (at 98 m. S).Below this sterile level, and the pits dug through it, the "Barbar" and "chain-ridged" levels stretched 4 meters down to bedrock. They contained the two building levels already attested from the previous year and, in addition, a large number of important "small-finds". Of these undoubtedly the most significant are three steatite stamp seals of the type known from discoveries in Mesopotamia and in Mohenjo-daro in the lndus valley (Fig. 13), and already attested from Bahrain in a surface discovery 5). These will be discussed in a later section. One (Fig. 13 a) lay in the floor deposit to the upper building level (level 14). The second (Fig. 13 b) is without dating significance, as it lay in a secondary deposit, the "fill" of the robber trench which had removed part of the inner facing stones of the fortification wall. The third (Fig. 13 c) lay in a layer of beach sand (level 21) which, soon after the erection of the fortification wall, had been laid immediately behind it - presumably to fill up irregularities in ground level. Seal c is thus clearly considerably earlier than a. The layer of beach sand was of interest in other respects. It contained a portion of the rim of a stone bowl ornamented with engraved circles with centre points. Portions of similarly decorated stone bowls were also found in the layer immediately below (22) and the layer next adjacent above (19). A stone bowl with similar decoration, in the possession of the Bahrain government and found close to the finding place of the surface-discovered stamp seal, has been described in earlier reports 6). The layer of beach sand also contained, in addition to two beads, a very large number of small scraps of oxydized copper. Other discoveries of significance were, in the same level (14) as the upper stamp seal, a piece of ivory, clearly a piece broken off an unworked tusk where the sawcut removing the tusk had overlapped itself; and in the level below the lower stamp seal (23) a rimsherd bearing a Sumerian record of capacity. This short inscription is illustrated and discussed on p. 165 by Dr. Læssøe, and here it need only be said that the style of script is not inconsistant with Early Dynastic or Sargonid date (roughly 3000-2000 BC).In these levels there was also a small quantity of painted pottery (Figs. 14-15) in general of much finer paste and from smaller vessels than the red grit-tempered ridged ware among which it lay. The designs were in all cases geometric, cross-hatched lozenges, zigzags, triangles and horizontal lines. Apart from a few specimens in the upper levels of red zigzag lines on buff, apparently applied after firing, all the painted decoration was in black, mainly over a reddish brown slip, though occasionally on a buff and once on a greenish background.This is the evidence to hand at the completion of the 1957 season of excavation, and it is clear that we have sufficient to gain a fairly clear idea of what has been happening, at least on this tiny portion of the northern beaches of Bahrain, and particularly when it has been happening. We have identified six successive cultural epochs in the history of this peripheral area of the city at the Qala'a. It would already perhaps be in order to give these epochs the Roman numerals, starting from the bottom, which mark the final crystalization of a site's history, but, as our area is still peripheral, and there may come further surprises as we work inwards, it will be best to keep to our descriptive names, the names which have grown up naturally in the course of tossing baskets of potsherds from one archeologist to another.We have then, in chronological order: -a) the "chain-ridge" period,b) the "Barbar" period,c) the "caramel-ware" period,d) the "glazed-bowl" period,e) the "lslamic-palace" period, andf) the "Portuguese" period. Apart from the first two, which develop imperceptibly from the one to the other, each of these periods is clearly distinguished from every other in style and type of pottery, while many of the periods include a number of "small-finds". There is thus a good chance of being able to ascribe a fairly accurate date to some, if not all, of the periods, and thus to be able to reconstruct in some measure the absolute history of this part of Bahrain. This will involve going in some detail through the characteristics of each of the six periods and drawing parallels, where this is possible, with periods of known date elsewhere in the world. That sort of thing is only interesting if one is interested in that sort of thing, and the reader who prefers results to methods is urged to jump to page 162 where the conclusions will be found painlessly tabulated.The "chain-ridge" period (Fig. 10):In this period the pottery is predominantly (50-60 % of all sherds) of thin, grit-tempered, dark-red to biscuit ware. A greyish-white slip is occasionally found. The dominant type is a large globular jar either terminating in a simple, slightly thickened, incurving rim, or in a thick shoulder, a narrow vertical neck 3--5 cms. high and a rolled rim. The body, though never the neck, of the jar is often ornamented with applied horizontal ridges either of the "chain" pattern described earlier or, more rarely, of continuous sharp-edged form. The jars have either round or slightly flattened bases, but the continuation of the horizontal ridges right down to the foot of the jar frequently converts the lowest ridge into what is in effect a ring base. All pots are wheel-made.Other characteristics common both to this and to the following period are described following the latter.The "Barbar" period (Fig. 8):Here
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