Writ in Stone

An Australian archaeologist is revealing a new facet of the early inhabitants of the Hajar Mountains. And not a moment too soon, Piers Grimley Evans discovers.
Gulf News, 28 May, 2005 http://gulfnews.com/Articles/FeaturesNF.asp? ArticleID=166730

But time to record and decipher their mysterious designs may be running out. During the last winter I made a push to record as many as possible, she says. I almost felt it was my duty because the sites are being

At his first glance of a petroglyph, a trekker might think he had stumbled across a piece of graffiti.

destroyed. Along with this archaeological conundrum, the Hajar Mountains are stuffed with valuable minerals and divided by a widening mesh of roads. At an abandoned village that is home to Fujairahs largest collection of petroglyphs, the rock art is already under threat. Over there was a collection of motifs that was a reference point for this areas rock art, Ziolkowski says, as we follow a paved track that leads to a chromite mine. The rocks still there but it was moved when a turning point was put in the road. The motifs are no longer visible. The sites need to be mapped, she says, so that when companies want to bulldoze an area, the Municipality is aware the petroglyphs are there and can act to protect them. Baffling variety These petroglyphs come in a baffling variety. A few are clearly figurative one of the tens in the valley of the abandoned village is a naturalistic depiction of an Arabian leopard (which roamed here until relatively recently) complete with spots and a bushy tail. Much more common, though, are geometric designs or highly stylised figures. Popular motifs include feet, camels, snakes, riders on horses and

Dr Michele Ziolkowski in Fujairah

But the graffiti has been there probably about 3,000 years ago, according to Dr Michele Ziolkowski, the Dubai-based Australian archaeologist seeking to decipher these mysterious figures and motifs. For the last 10 years, Dr Ziolkowski has devoted her free time to the UAEs rock art. Even in summer afternoons, when wadis become rock-strewn pressure cookers, she scours the boulders of the Hajar Mountains with a notebook, camera and GPS in hand. By July this year, her completed survey will reveal the surprising prolificacy of the UAEs prehistoric taggers.

sinister clawed figures with curved swords. The petroglyph-makers also deployed a wide repertoire of circles, tear-shapes and rectangles. Motifs tend to be less than a foot in height or width. They appear both alone and grouped together on the same rock. After millennia some still stand out pale grey against brown rock surfaces. Others have faded to become invisible to an inexpert gaze. But all, unless you know what to look for, can be tricky to spot. People see me walking around the rocks and come up to ask me what I am doing, says Ziolkowski. I have to point the motifs out to them before they see them. For Ziolkowski on the other hand finding these figures and designs is routine. She has catalogued almost 500 examples. As soon as she identifies one, she immediately records its position with a GPS and jots down a brief description. But to get a photographic record she must return at dawn when the light is best for picking out the designs. Helpful leads Apart from tackling the Hajar Mountains ubiquitous goats (who apparently have an infuriating taste for notepaper), it is both a laborious and solitary undertaking. However, Ziolkowski has not worked entirely in isolation. She acknowledges the contribution of her father who assisted for a month last winter as well as of the helpful leads from the Emirates Natural History Group and the archaeological departments of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah. The few communities still living here also provide excellent sources. A lot of local people know about them and want to help, she says. In a village called Roweida, the people even saved petroglyphs by getting the Municipality to fence them off.

But in terms of the official archaeological record, this rock art is still fresh news. When I started working here, my supervisor said there was very little evidence of rock art in the UAE, says Ziolkowski. Then we began a survey of sites looking for signs of early metalworking in the mountains. As soon as I knew what to look for I started running across petroglyphs everywhere I looked. The climate of the UAE has changed greatly in the 3,000 years since the rock art was created. The Hajar Mountains bone-dry terrain is now sparsely inhabited and rarely visited. Almost all were created with a technique known as percussion. With a pointed stone, their makers pecked them into the patina of desert varnish a russet-brown stain that creeps across the stones of the Hajar Mountains as bacteria slowly oxidise manganese within the rock. I experimented to see how the figures were made, says Ziolkowski. It took me about an hour to copy a small petroglyph of a camel in a circle using a sharp stone to peck out the shape. But the effort depends greatly on the depth of the desert varnish and the flatness of the stone. Unfortunately, the process provides little clue to the age of the designs. Desert varnish is not laid down at a constant rate. The clearest figures are not necessarily the most recent so, for now, identifying the petroglyphmakers relies on drawing comparisons with dateable artifacts, objects found nearby or in association with the . Iron Age origins?

Such evidence points mainly in one direction. There are so many parallels with the Iron Age that they cannot be ignored, says Ziolkowski. I also think that some petroglyphs could be slightly earlier this is again based on comparisons with motifs on dated artefacts. But even at an individual site they were probably made over a long period of time. Some were still being made until the last century. But what do they all mean? We may never know. Many symbols appear very similar to wusum, the tribal marks that you will find throughout the deserts of Asia and Africa, she says. They are generally fairly basic geometric designs to mark the property of a tribe or family. Today, you will still find them on camels. I cant prove it, but I believe some petroglyphs might have been used as geographical markers for journeys, she says. In Roweida, you can hear this explanation for the markings and there are other examples of ancient traditions apparently surviving. Today, for instance, you can still find spouted vessels similar to those used in the Bronze Age. Even after 3,000 years, Ziolkowski believes more light can still be shone on the petroglyph mystery. By mapping the precise location of petroglyphs we can look for patterns that may offer important information, she says. Experts studying petroglyphs in other parts of the world, such as Australia and North America, are also looking for scientific ways to date them accurately. She hopes her new evidence of the true scale of the UAEs rock art will increase awareness of this aspect of the national heritage. Already, she says, the departments of antiquity in Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah are acting with the civic authorities to record and conserve their petroglyphs.

But the pressure has not lifted just yet. Even now when I drive through the mountains I think, Oh no! Theres another one. I feel compelled to get out take a GPS co-ordinate, get some photographs and make a few notes. Im never sure its going to be there the next time. I think there may be many more, says Ziolkowski. I suspect we have only found a small proportion of whats out there. Who made the petroglyphs? Direct evidence is scarce, but a series of intriguing parallels give some clues to the identity of the petroglyphmakers. An alabaster foot unearthed at Muweilah, in Sharjah, is one of the principal exhibits in the petroglyph whodunnit. Footprints crop up regularly on the rocks of the Hajar Mountains. The cruciform motif on the foots base also resembles a very common petroglyph.

Like most similar parallels, this foot dates from the Iron Age. The Iron Age in the UAE was a period with a widespread and homogeneous culture. Settlements popped up in desert, coastal and mountain areas. The newly domesticated camels also allowed greater movement and trade enabling contact between this region and Mesopotamia, Bahrain and Iran. Several local Iron Age finds feature snakes, another common petroglyph. They appear on ceramic decorations and in bronze figures in Al Qusais in Dubai. Intriguingly, snakes crop up at the spiritual centre of Iron Age settlements. Another

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An archaeological survey of northern Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, Leanne

Brass1 and Georgia Britton11The Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia, Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy Volume 15 Issue 2 Page 149 - November 2004 http://www.blackwellsynergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.16000471.2004.00250.x/abs/?cookieSet=1 Images of petroglyphs from Fujairah from a very interesting site here, in French: http://archeo.unige.ch/fuj/

striking resemblance connects petroglyphs in southern Fujairah and a figure on a soft-stone pendant unearthed at Tell Abraq. This shows a human with a sword or dagger. It has been suggested this might be related to Lamashtu, an evil demon from Mesopotamia who appears on amulets in the first millennium BC.

http://gulfnews.com/Articles/FeaturesN F.asp?ArticleID=166730 Image of Lamashtu from http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/gods/e xplore/lamashtu.html More reading: from UAEInteract.com