Beyond the Desert and the Sown: Settlement Intensification in Late Prehistoric Southeastern Arabia

Arabia lies outside the focus of most archaeologists working in western Asia and is considered to have been a periphery in the past and therefore peripheral to contemporary research interests. The reasons for this include generalized assumptions about human-environmental dynamics and a belief in the necessity of foreign intervention as a spur for innovation and change in arid environments. In this paper, these two assumptions are examined, and a case study from southeastern Arabia is presented which details evidence for indigenous adaptation and a concomitant emergence of political and economic complexity in the early first millennium B.C.