Uqdat al-Bakrah. An early Iron Age metal-working atelier just inside the empty quarter in Oman

The discovery of ʿUqdat al-Bakrah, which at the time was erroneously labelled As-Safah, occurred by chance: at the end of March 2012, during an excursion in the desert, a small group of tourists composed by two Englishmen and an Ameri- can, had unexpectedly stumbled upon a place where dozens of ancient bronze objects emerged from the sands, most of them in very good conservation conditions. The discoverers immediately warned the authorities, and Maurizio Tosi († 24.02.2017) was promptly informed of the discovery. At the time he was advisor for archaeology in the Ministry of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate. He immediately organized a short expedition at the site on 3 April together with his closest collaborators in order to photograph, detect, GPS positioning the finds emerging from the sands – axes, daggers, arrowheads, metal vessels, hoes, hammers – and to transport them to the Ministry’s warehouses in Muscat. Thanks to Tosi, the exceptionality of the site was immediately understood: it was a large workshop for bronze and iron manufacturing, dating back to the Early Iron Age.The site of ʿUqdat al-Bakrah is located about 70 km west of ʿIbri, in Oman’s the north-western back country, some 25 km inside the eastern-most edge of the Rub al-Khali, which is the greatest sand desert in the world with a surface of 650,000 km2. Short preliminary explorations were carried out in May and June 2012, but the real mission began in January 2013. An Italian-Omani team to explore the large area, coordinated by Sultan Saif al-Bakri, then Director of the Department of Excavations and Archaeological Studies of the Sultanate, and by Maurizio Tosi, directed in the field by Francesco Genchi and with Claudio Giardino as archaeometallurgist. The site consists of two large and contiguous areas of metal processing, separated by a large sand dune. The whole archaeological site is over 25 hectares. During the first field activity at the site we recovered registered some 500 bronze objects. At the time of discovery they were intact and in surprisingly good condition. The items included mainly small and medium-sized daggers, knives, small axes, arrowheads, spear-heads, bowls, fragmented plates and a large number of casting melts. Stakes and small and hoes were recovered too, but were less frequent. Stone tools are present in small quantities on the surface of the site. They include hammer- stones, grinding-stones and large anvils made of hard rock. Also small whetstones came to light that were used for finishing and sharpening the metal implements that were produced in the workshop. In addition to a large number of bronze and stone objects that were lying on the ground, the remains of many metal-working furnaces were also clearly visible on the surface, surrounded by circles of pebbles. The metallurgical structures were located under the sand at a depth varying between 40 and 70 cm.Often there were still remains of the charcoal used to melt the metal on the bottom of the furnaces. We used some of it for radiocarbon analyses, which provided calibrated dates between the 16th and 13th centuries BC. Over 260 ovens emerged over the entire site, which differed in shape and size. Some of them were roughly rectangular or oval, about a meter and a half long, other ones were circular with a diameter of about 60 cm. Some of the pit furnaces must also have been used also as forges for iron processing. The analysis was carried out by P. Yule and G. Gernez, both metal object specialists of Arabian Peninsula Most of the time went toward updating the classifications of 2001 and 2015 for metallic artefacts in southeastern Arabia. The finds are led on cards which often had to be modified in light of the new data. The greatest difficulty in the re-classification and chronology is the poor and unstratified nature of most of the archaeological contexts. Most of the findings flow into the assemblages typical of the early Iron Age (1800-1200 BC). The finds are very refined and find close comparisons with those of the treasure of Selme, a town near Ibri, not far from the site. The findings from this settlement and the cemetery area 70 km to the east provide important data on the diachronic interpretation. The most important set of unearthed objects is represented by bronze weapons. Such weapons comprise various typologies of daggers, arrowheads and axes. Most of them seem to be locally produced but it is possible to identify some particular shape which resemble analogous objects coming from the Iranian plateau. Similar objects, including flanged hilt daggers, tanged daggers or decorated bronze hilts, which actually represent a quite simple form, have also been found in various unspecified sites in Luristan, in Tepe Sialk, Tepe Giyan and Tepe Guran.