New archaeological research has revealed an exceptional Bronze Age town in the Khaybar oasis of north-west Saudi Arabia. The discovery by a team led by Dr Guillaume Charloux of the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project and Dr Munirah Almushawh from the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) confirms a major transition from mobile, nomadic life to settled, town life in the second half of the third millennium BCE.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, the new research provides significant evidence to further challenge the picture of mobile pastoral-nomadism as the dominant economic and social way of life of northwest Arabia in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages.

Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud, Governor of the Royal Commission for AlUla and Minister of Culture for Saudi Arabia, stated: “This important archaeological discovery highlights the Kingdom’s global significance in the field of archaeology and confirms the depth of civilisation that the land holds. This discovery reinforces the Kingdom’s efforts in protecting cultural and historical heritage and emphasises the importance of exchanging knowledge and expertise with the world to enhance awareness of our shared human heritage.”

He added, “This discovery confirms the Kingdom’s commitment to preserving the world’s heritage and promoting cultural heritage in accordance with the provisions of Saudi Vision 2030. It also highlights the importance of strengthening international partnerships to present this rich legacy to future generations and the world.”

It also implies that oases such as Khaybar were carefully controlled and highly valued landscapes that, with the advent of agriculture, supported permanent populations and must have been dynamic centres for regional exchanges and other interactions with the local mobile communities. This nascent urbanism and increasing social complexity had a profound impact on socio-economic organisation in the region.

While northwest Arabia in the Bronze Age was largely populated by pastoral mobile groups, the region was also dotted with interconnected, monumental walled oases centred around small fortified settlements, such as Tayma and Qurayyah.

Known as al-Natah, the newly discovered town in Khaybar is the first to provide clear evidence for differentiated functional areas – notably residential and funerary – within fortifications. Al-Natah was built around 2400-2000 BCE and endured until 1500-1300 BCE. The small town was home to some 500 people in its 2.6 hectares and was protected by the 15-kilometre stone rampart that encircled the Khaybar oasis.

The new research was sponsored by the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) and the French Agency for the Development of AlUla (AFALULA). The Archaeology, Collections and Conservation team at RCU is directing one of the world’s largest and most ambitious archaeological research programmes, fulfilling its goal to broaden global awareness of the AlUla region as a premier cultural heritage landscape and destination.

The cultural heritage of north-west Arabia is rich, complex and important to Saudi Arabia and beyond. By commissioning and championing revelatory research on human activity in the past, such as the project that produced these new findings in Khaybar, RCU demonstrates its leadership in regional archaeological research and its responsible custodianship of cultural heritage assets and landscape.

The Khaybar oasis is situated at the edge of the Harrat Khaybar lava field and formed by the confluence of three wadis amid an otherwise largely arid area. At the northern outskirts of the oasis, al-Natah lay buried under piles of basalt boulders for millennia.

The research team identified the al-Natah site in October 2020, though the structures and its layout were difficult to discern. By February 2024 the team had employed field surveys, targeted excavation, and high-resolution photography to achieve an understanding of what lay beneath. More extensive excavation in the future could sharpen the picture.

Dr Charloux, from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), stated: “Our discovery challenges the ancient model of north-west Arabia in the Bronze Age as a vast desert populated by groups of nomadic pastoralists. The discovery of the al-Natah site, dated to the late Early and Middle Bronze Ages, confirms that rural urbanism arose earlier than previously believed in this region. Directly accessible below the surface, al-Natah town represents almost a thousand years of use that for the first time makes it possible to consider the complexity of a sedentary settlement in a walled oasis during the Bronze Age.”

The findings by the RCU-AFALULA-CNRS team paint a preliminary picture of what life was like for people in al-Natah. They lived in dwellings perhaps reminiscent of traditional Arabian tower houses, with the ground level possibly used for storage, and the living spaces on one or two storeys above. They walked along narrow streets to reach the centre of town. They buried their dead in stepped tower tombs, grouped together to form a necropolis. In some tombs they paid tribute to a perhaps ‘warrior’ class, by laying precious gifts in these tombs – such as ceramics, beads and metal weapons, including axes and daggers.

The people wore beads, prepared food with mortar and pestle, and made and traded pottery, travelling the regional exchange network by donkey. They worked metals, grew cereals and raised animals – the local diet was heavy on sheep and goat. They worked communally to reinforce their rampart with dry-laid stones (no mortar) and raw earth.

The research team included two Saudis working for RCU, Dr Munirah Almushawh, a co-director of the project, and Saifi Alshilali, a historian and a member of the local community in Khaybar.

The new findings add to a flurry of studies which since 2018 have explored features of ancient AlUla and Khaybar including monumental ritual structures known as mustatils, large-scale hunting traps called ‘desert kites’, long-distance ‘funerary avenues’ that linked settlements and pastures by pathways lined with tombs, and Neolithic dwellings known as ‘standing stone circles’.

Together the studies show that the early societies of north-west Arabia were more complex and connected to the wider region than previously believed. During the coming autumn fieldwork season, RCU is supporting 10 archaeological projects comprising more than 100 archaeologists and associated specialists in AlUla County and Khaybar.

The discovery furthers the emergence of AlUla and Saudi Arabia as global centres for archaeological research and intercultural dialogue. It follows the AlUla World Archaeology Symposium (AWAS 2024) which took place on Oct 30-31 and saw an interdisciplinary group of archaeologists and cultural heritage practitioners from around the world to explore the theme “Moving forward: past, present and future in the archaeology and heritage of mobile communities”.