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Al-Ḥajar oasis towns again!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Jocelyn Orchard  and
Gordon Stanger
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Extract

There is absolutely no doubt that D. T. Potts does not agree with the conclusions — based on long-term fieldwork in the al-Ḥajar region of south-eastern Arabia (Fig. 1) — that Gordon Stanger and I recently published in Iraq (Orchard and Stanger 1994, Orchard 1995), and he has said so most forcefully in a “Reply” also published in this journal (Potts 1997). Stanger and I have read Potts's article with considerable interest and, given that his arguments are not only flawed but also confused, and that he often places emphasis on the wrong things, such as on the calibration of carbon-14 dates rather than on the provenance of carbon-14 samples, and on architectural detail rather than on the location and layout of monuments, we have come to the conclusion that his piece requires an equally firm response. Stanger's comments on Potts's statements regarding the climate of the al-Ḥajar region form Part 2 of this article.

In Potts's “Reply” two attitudes predominantly govern his arguments. The first is high indignation that anyone should have the temerity to “challenge” what he regards as “the foundations of Arabian Prehistory”, an indignation that affects the entire tone of his article and culminates in a particularly hostile concluding statement (pp. 70–1), to which I shall return later. The second, and more regrettable, is a propensity to ignore the archaeological landscape, which is truly extraordinary given that Potts is discussing a region where landscape archaeology is of fundamental importance.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 61 , 1999 , pp. 89 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1999

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