The South Arabian form and its implications for the interpretation of desert kites

There is a distinctive type of desert kite in southern Arabia. On low‐resolution aerial photographs it has the form of a Y and a closer look reveals a scissor‐shaped structure. The head and the tails are very distinctive: the head is an open structure with a continuous wall on the right side and many chambers on the left; the tail consists of many piles of stones arranged in a straight line, and only towards the head does it change into a continuous wall. These impressions, together with the—now known—wide distribution of desert kites in non‐arid regions as well, lead to the idea that the stone alignments of Carnac in France could also have served as animal traps.