Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies Volume 54 2025

Papers from the fifty-seventh meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 27–29 June 2024

Silvia Lischi

• Publisher: Archaeopress Journals
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781805830610
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Index: Social Sciences

The Seminar for Arabian Studies is the longest-running academic forum dedicated to the presentation of research on the cultural and natural heritage of the Arabian Peninsula. Since its first meeting in 1968, the Seminar has covered a wide range of subjects including archaeology, epigraphy, history, ethnography, art, architecture, linguistics, and literature from prehistory to the present. In 2019 the Seminar changed from being a British-based forum to an international setting, starting with a meeting at the University of Leiden and continuing with other European institutions. 2025 marks another turning point, as the meeting is being organized for the first time in the Arabian Peninsula, at the Zayed National Museum, Department of Culture and Tourism (Abu Dhabi), bringing this increasingly important international meeting to the region.

The 57th Seminar for Arabian Studies, held in Paris in 2024, was a particularly memorable event, bringing together scholars from a broad range of disciplines to discuss the archaeology, history, epigraphy, and philology of the Arabian Peninsula. This volume includes seventeen papers presented in the ordinary sessions and three papers presented in the special session 'Zaydi governance in Yemen'.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Photographs used on the cover of this volume
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Guidelines and Transliteration
• Editor’s Foreword
• In Memoriam
• Interconnected buildings in the Old Town of AlUla and their social significance
• Preliminary report on the epigraphic survey in Yanbuʿ, Saudi Arabia: first season (2023)
• The Yemeni mummies: a brief report and comprehensive bibliography
• The ‘cupola’ of the Ṣanʿāʾ cathedral: it still exists
• The nature of post-Bronze Age human occupation at Tell Abraq (Umm al‑Quwain): archaeological insights from the 2023 field season
• Dating early narratives of the Hijra
• The first excavation season at Shokur: a multi-period fortified settlement between desert and mountains
• Piecing together the evidence: architecture, inscriptions, and sherds from an early to middle Islamic funerary context in Qurḥ/al‑Mabiyāt
• Exploring the diversity of tomb typology with accompanied burial practices in its socio-economic contexts in the Wadi Suq period (c.2000–1600 BC), south-east Arabia
• The emergence of South Arabian urban societies: the material culture from abroad in context
• Funerary rituals on Qurayyah’s painted pottery
• Can community-based participatory research enhance our understanding of Arabian archaeology?
• A rural perspective on the Umm an-Nar and Wadi Suq periods from Burj Huraiz (northern Oman)
• The onomasticon of the Himaitic and Ancient South Arabian inscriptions from Ḥimā: a comparative overview and insights into their cultural and linguistic layers
• Muʿtariḍ Community Mall: more insights into the development of the hydraulic, agricultural, and funerary landscapes of al‑‘Ayn (UAE)
• An Iron Age artefact hoard discovered at Saruq al-Hadid-53 archaeological site, Dubai, UAE: a preliminary study
• The production of Bahlā Ware in the context of late Islamic Oman
• Focus session ‘Zaydi governance in Yemen between legal theory and political practice’
• Titles of papers read at the Seminar for Arabian Studies held at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 27–29 June 024
• Papers given at previous Seminars have been published as follows
• Back cover