Fishing in the Arabian sea : a short note on the prehistoric sites rh6 and ra's al-jinz 1 in oman

B. WILKENS

The material studied here derives from the excavations in north-eastern Oman, directed by P. Biagi of the University of Venice, Italy. The excavation of Ra's al Jinz is one of the Joint Hadd Project's campaigns, an international project that planned both the excavation of certain sites in the area of Cape el Hadd and the survey of parts of the region.

Studying fish remains from excavations in the Arabian peninsula is particularly difficult due to the large variety of species that live in the area, and also to the lack of comparative collections of fish species currently present in the Indian ocean. For this work we used a small collection composed of fish bought at the market of Salalah (Oman), which also helped for the study of remains from the nearby city of Sum-

huram1. The collection is clearly far from complete and in many cases it was not possible to take identification as far as the species level..

Another problem regards periodic growth marks, visible on the vertebrae. In a temperate climate with well-defined alternation of seasons, the more compact line corresponding to a block in growth is formed in winter when the temperature is lower and food is scarce, while the wider line forms from the spring onwards. In a tropical climate such as that of the Arabian peninsula, the range of temperatures is slight and other factors, such as wind and rainfall are of greater impor-

Paléorient, vol. 31/1, p. 126-130 © CNRS ÉDITIONS 2005