Tourism

Discovery of Bronze Age town reframes Saudi history

Al Natah, a walled settlement thought to have housed 500 people, dates back to 2400 BCE

November 4, 2024, 5:31 PM

A 3D virtual reconstruction of the Bronze Age town of Al Natah, based on new archaeological evidence

Archaeological research in northwest Saudi Arabia has revealed the existence of urbanisation far earlier than previously thought.

Excavation at the Khaybar oasis has found that a sophisticated Bronze Age town existed between 2400 and 1500 BCE. It had three-storey houses, a 15km wall, streets and a cemetery.

“This reshapes our understanding of the Bronze Age in northwest Arabia and changes thinking about pastoral communities,” said Abdulrahman Alsuhaibani, vice-president of culture at the Royal Commission for AlUla.

“Some believe people were simply chasing water and food, but this is a three-storey town with a wall.

“It’s evidence of stability at that time. It preceded the Abrahamic faiths. It wasn’t just desert. It was a key trade hub and played a role in the history of civilisation.”

The discovery, made using digital imaging and targeted excavation, could boost Saudi efforts to develop cultural and heritage tourism based on the Arabian Peninsula’s pre-Islamic history.

The site, known as Al Natah, is the most sophisticated to have been revealed so far from under layers of basalt rock in the region. The area also includes the Tayma, Qurayya, Al Bad and Dedan settlements.

A similar town in southern Saudi Arabia, Al Faw, was given Unesco World Heritage Site status this year. However, it dates from more recent times – the first millennium BCE.

An aerial photograph shows the Al Natah site, with much of it covered by basalt blocks that hid the town for centuries

“We have done here in a few years what we would [previously] have needed a decade to do,” team leader Guillaume Charloux of the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project told AGBI. “It’s a huge change in the archaeological method that permitted us to get such results so fast.”

15 kilometres

The length of the wall surrounding Al Natah

The town houses a community of around 500 people and the wall surrounding its three sections – a residential area, a likely decision-making area and a necropolis – was at times 5 metres tall and 2 metres thick.

“Clearly ramparts like this have more than one function,” Charloux said. “It shows your people that you control your water supply, you control your agricultural lands, that you are strong. So, it’s extremely important.”

The northwest region, which was later part of the Nabataean state that was based in Petra in south Jordan, contains two giga-projects – the futuristic city Neom and the wellness and adventure tourism retreat of AlUla among the ancient ruins.

Archaeologists at the Al Natah site with markings indicating the outlines of two dwellings

Saudi Arabia was rated the fourth-best performing tourism destination so far this year in the latest UN World Tourism Barometer, increasing 73 percent since 2019. Tourism spending rose from $16.4 billion in 2019 to $36 billion in 2023.

The findings add to a flurry of studies since 2018 that have detailed monumental ritual structures, large-scale hunting traps, standing stone circles and funerary avenues lined with tombs, in the AlUla and Khaybar regions.

During the Bronze Age, the region sat between two of the first civilisations to emerge in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

“You have no traces of administration [in Khaybar] so it shows a specific development. It’s not at all something extremely evolved, it’s still weak – the social stratification is still emerging as a complex city,” Charloux said.