Make a virtual visit to our ongoing archaeological excavations of a Late Stone Age village on Marawah Island. You can follow the excavation via my Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/mark.j.beech

or via our blog on Twitter at:
https://twitter.com/abudhabiturath

These are continuing excavations at the site of MR11. The site has been radiocarbon dated to between the mid 6th to mid 5th millennium BC.

For more information about the previous work carried out at the site, please read:

Beech M., R. Cuttler, D. Moscrop, H. Kallweit & J. Martin. 2005. New evidence for the Neolithic settlement of Marawah Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies  35: 37-56.

click here to download this publication.

Attended NYUAD lecture given by Ron Hawker, Lessons from the Past: Reflections on Historic Architecture in the UAE, held on Sunday 31 January 2016, from 18:30 – 20:00 pm at the NYUAD Saadiyat Campus, Conference Center.

For more info visit Ron’s blog at:

http://rhawker.me

http://rhawker.me/2016/01/25/lessons-from-the-past-nyuad-institute-january-31-2016/

Visit the Twitter diary of our recent excavation on Sir Bani Yas Island at: twitter.com/abudhabiturath. This uncovered the ancient well of the former Late Islamic period settlement of al Zahr.

(Photograph Courtesy of Yale University)

Renowned palaeoanthropologist Andrew Hill died on September 12, aged 69, after a prolonged battle with cancer.

The Englishman was the J Clayton Stephenson professor of anthropology at Yale University, and a curator and head of the division of anthropology in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Before coming to the famed Ivy League school in 1985 he had held research positions at the national museums of Kenya, the directorship at the International Louis Leakey Memorial Institute of African Prehistory, in Nairobi, as well as a research fellowship at Harvard University.

Since 1984, he had been involved in palaeontological research at fossil sites in Abu Dhabi’s Western Region that date back six to seven million years ago, from the Late Miocene period.

Together with Peter Whybrow, he organised the first international palaeontology conference on the Late Miocene faunas, geology and palaeoenvironments of Abu Dhabi in 1995.

The papers presented at this conference were published by Yale University Press in the renowned monograph Fossil Vertebrates of Arabia, in 1999.

Since 2006, he had renewed annual fieldwork activities in the Western Region, co-directing the Baynunah Palaeontology Project with his former PhD student, Dr Faysal Bibi, of the Berlin Natural History Museum, and myself.

Hill was born on June 6, 1946 at Huthwaite, a small village in Nottinghamshire, England. He completed his bachelor’s degree in geology in 1967 at Reading University UK, and his PhD at Bedford College, which is part of the University of London, in 1975.

Since 1968 he had carried out fieldwork in the UAE, Pakistan and eastern Africa, where for many years he directed the multidisciplinary Baringo Palaeontological Research Project.

In 1994, he received the Yale College-Lex Hixon ’63 prize for teaching excellence in the social sciences. In 2009, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 2012, he was recognised as a “notable alumnus” of Royal Holloway and New Bedford College.

He was interested in the whole range of human evolution but particularly in the environmental and ecological context in which it occurred.

During his long and distinguished career he published many important contributions relating to African studies, human evolution, environment, ecology, evolutionary theory, anthropology and archaeology.

His contribution was, however, not only in the form of scientific publications, but also took the form of discovering internationally important sites. The most famous took place in 1975 when he and a colleague were gleefully tossing elephant dung at each other at Laetoli, a hominid archaeological site in Tanzania.

As Hill dived out of the way, he stumbled on what turned out to be one of the wonders of prehistoric finds: a trail of hominid footprints about 3.6 million years old.

Until then, the oldest-known footprints of human ancestors were tens of thousands of years old. But this trail, about 25 metres long and preserved in volcanic ash, had been made by some of the first upright-walking hominids.

Hill’s work near Lake Baringo, Kenya, together with his wife, Sally McBrearty, an archaeologist, identified the first-known chimpanzee fossils (several teeth proving to be about 500,000 years old), shedding light on the evolutionary split between humans and chimps.

More recently he was part of the Baynunah palaeontology project team working in Al Gharbia, helping to discover important fossil sites and specimens.

Last year, a cheek tooth of a fossil monkey was discovered, a find that was later published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It proved to be the oldest guenon monkey known in the world, and the first record that guenons ever ranged outside Africa.

He is survived by his wife and companion of 35 years, Dr McBrearty, who is from Glastonbury, Connecticut, in the US; his brother Stewart Hill, of Twickenham, UK; and his mother, May Hill, of Mansfield, UK.

This obituary was also published online in The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi on 21 September, 2015, appearing in the print edition on 22 September 2015. 

Andrew Hill: An anthropologist who devoted much time to Abu Dhabi’s wilderness (Source: The National, 21 September  2015).

A life inspired by the past (Source: The National, 22 September 2015).

The Seminar for Arabian Studies is the only annual international forum for the presentation of the latest research in the humanities on the Arabian Peninsula. The three-day conference is held each July at the British Museum and the proceedings are published in time for the conference the following year.

The 49th Seminar will be held on Friday 24th, Saturday 25th, and Sunday 26th July 2015. For further information about the Seminar programme please visit: Seminar for Arabian Studies

I am involved with two papers at this years seminar:

(1) I will be presenting a paper on behalf of our team:

Mark Beech, Kristian Strutt, Lucy Blue, Abdulla Khalfan Al Kaabi, Waleed Awad Omar, Ahmed Abdulla Al Haj El Faki, Anjana Reddy Lingareddy and John Martin:
Ubaid-related sites of the southern Gulf revisited: the Abu Dhabi coastal heritage initiative
Saturday 25th July – Session 3: Neolithic Archaeology (Chair: Robert Carter), 10:10 – 10:35 am.

(2) I am a co-author on the following paper:

Marjan Mashkour, Mark Beech, Karyne Debue, Lisa Yeomans, Stéphanie Bréhard and Sophie Méry:
The Faunal Remains from UAQ2 – an Ubaid-related coastal site at Umm Al-Qaiwain Emirate, 5500-4000 cal BCE, United Arab Emirates
Saturday 25th July – Session 3: Neolithic Archaeology (Chair: Robert Carter), 10:35 – 11:00 am.

A 7,000-year-old site on Dalma Island, which was first excavated in 1993, holds clues about the people who lived there and their relations with settlements along the Gulf coast. Watch this video of an interview held with Dr Mark Beech during the April 2015 excavation season.

Read the story, Delma Island has been centre of pearl diving for 7,000 years, say scientists, featured in The National newspaper.

BOATS AND ANCIENT HARBOURS SEMINAR

Monday 8 June 2015 – from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm.
Auditorium – 4th Floor – Tower B, Nation Towers Corniche.
Lunch provided (12:00 – 13:00 pm).

A series of talks presented by international experts to raise awareness of Abu Dhabi’s rich maritime heritage and to outline the project objectives of the Boats and Ancient Harbours initiative. This is your chance to learn about the different types of boats found in the region, the recording of traditional boats, interviews with former boat builders and users, as well as giving you an insight into the photographic and film archives relating to traditional boats and harbours of Abu Dhabi Emirate.

Programme

9:00 – 9:15 am – Dr Mark Jonathan Beech (Head of Coastal Heritage and Palaeontology section, Historic Environment Department, TCA Abu Dhabi) – Welcome and Introduction.

9:15 – 9:30 am – Dr Mark Jonathan Beech (Head of Coastal Heritage and Palaeontology section, Historic Environment Department, TCA Abu Dhabi) – The TCA Abu Dhabi Boats and Ancient Harbours Project.

9.30 – 10:00 am – Professor Dionisius Agius (Professor of Arabic and Islamic Material Culture at University of Exeter, U.K.) – The Emirati dhow: reality or romantic replica?

10:00 – 10:30 am – Dr Eric Staples (Director of Maritime Heritage Projects, Sultanate of Oman) – Reconstructing Remnants of the Sea: An interdisciplinary approach to maritime heritage.

10:30 – 11:00 am – Alessandro Ghidoni (Technical Director at Oman Maritime, Sultanate of Oman) – Dhows, Data and Documentation.

11:00 – 11:15 am – Ahmed Al Mheri (Traditional Boat Racing Coordinator, Emirates Heritage Club, Abu Dhabi) – Traditional Boat Racing and the activities of the Emirates Heritage Club.

11:15 – 11:30 am – Ahmed Ismael Al Marzouqi (Youth Sailing Coach) – Modern boat racing and the work of the Abu Dhabi Sailing and Yacht Club.

11:30 – 12:00 am – Discussion, Questions and Answers.

12:00 – 13:00 pm – Lunch.

Attendance is free, but please confirm your participation by sending an email to: Dr Anjana Reddy – anjana.lingareddy@tcaabudhabi.ae

The latest issue of the journal Anthropozoologica, Volume 49 – issue 2, dated December 2014 (Print ISSN: 0761-3032 – Online ISSN: 2107-0881), is devoted to the publication of a session held at the 11th ICAZ conference, entitled “Ancient Camelids in the Old World – Between Arabia and Europe“. The scientific editors of this volume are Marjan Mashkour and Mark Beech. The following chapters appear in the volume:

Preface
Jean-Denis Vigne, Christine Lefevre & Marylène Patou-Mathis
pg (s) 162-162

Foreword by the Scientific Editor Ancient Camelids in the Old World – Between Arabia and Europe 
Marjan Mashkour & Mark Beech
pg(s) 165–166

The Camel Today: Assets and Potentials 
Bernard Faye
pg(s) 167–176

Camels, donkeys and caravan trade: an emerging context from Barāqish, ancient Yathill (Wadi al-Jawf, Yemen) 
Francesco G. Fedele
pg (s) 177-194

Camels in Saudi oasis during the last two millennia; the examples of Dûmat al-Jandal (Al-Jawf Province) and al-Yamâma (Riyadh Province) 
Hervé Monchot
pg (s) 195-206

The camel remains from site HD-6 (Ra’s al-Hadd, Sultanate of Oman): An opportunity for a critical review of dromedary findings in Eastern Arabia
Antonio Curci, Michela Carletti and Maurizio Tosi
pg (s) 207-22 

The history of the camel bone dating project 
Caroline Grigson
pg(s) 225–235

Caravans, camel wrestling and cowrie shells: towards a social zooarchaeology of camel hybridization in anatolia and adjacent regions 
Canan Cakirlar and Rémi Berthon 
pg (s) 237-252.

Camels in Romania 
Adrian Bălăşescu
pg(s) 253–264

Recent camel finds from Hungary 
Laszlo Daróczi-cutting, Martha Daróczi-Szabo, Esther Sophia Smith, Andrea Kőrösi and Beata Tugya
pg (s) 265-280

Camels from Roman imperial sites in Serbia 
Sonja Vukovic-Bogdanovic and Svetlana Blazic
pg (s) 281-295

Camels in the front line 
László Bartosiewicz
pg (s) 297-302

The Baynunah Palaeontology conference takes place on Wednesday December 10th, 2014, at the Manarat Al Saadiyat Auditorium in Abu Dhabi. The conference runs from 9 am – 5 pm.  This programme is free; however, prior registration is required. Please call +971 2 657 5800 or email manaratalsaadiyat@tcaabudhabi.ae

The Baynunah Palaeontology project is a collaborative initiative between the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi) and the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, USA. It is co-directed by Dr Mark Beech (TCA Abu Dhabi), Faysal Bibi (Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin) and Andrew Hill (Yale), but involves many participants from different institutions in the USA, Europe and the Middle East. It follows on from earlier research projects by Andrew Hill and Peter Whybrow (1), by Faysal Bibi, and by the former Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey (ADIAS) and the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH).A large number of fossil sites of the Baynunah Formation have been discovered widely exposed over the Al Gharbia region of Abu Dhabi emirate. Most Baynunah sites have yielded fossilized bones showing a diversity of animals which lived in the Arabian Peninsula in the late Miocene Epoch, between 6 and 8 million years ago. The Baynunah rocks and fossils indicate that at this time, a river system came across the Arabian Peninsula through what is today the United Arab Emirates. The Baynunah Palaeontology conference is the first public event to be held by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority to bring the latest information about these fossil discoveries to a wider audience. We hope you enjoy the event and that you leave with a deeper appreciation for the ancient past of Abu Dhabi.

(1) Whybrow, P.J. and Hill, A. (eds.), 1999. Fossil Vertebrates of Arabia: with Emphasis on the Late Miocene Faunas, Geology, and Palaeoenvironments of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

BAYNUNAH PALAEONTOLOGY CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Wednesday 10 December 2014, 9 am – 5 pm.
Manarat Al Saadiyat Auditorium, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi.

9:00 – 9:15: Introduction & Opening welcome address by Mohammed Amer Al Neyadi (Director, Historic Environment Department).

9:15 – 9:35: Faysal Bibi, Andrew Hill and Mark Beech, 7 Million Years ago in Abu Dhabi – 30 Years of Discovery, and What It All Means.

9:35 – 9:45: Q & A.

9:45 – 10:05: Mark Beech, Abdulla Khalfan Al Kaabi, Ahmed Abdalla El Faki & Anjana Reddy, Mapping the Baynunah Formation: the TCA fossil sites geodatabase.

10:05 – 10:15: Q & A.

10:15 – 10:35: Marilyn Fox, Collecting and Preparing Baynunah Fossils.

10:35 – 10:45: Q & A.

10:45 – 11:15: Coffee Break

11:15 – 11:35: Jean-Renaud Boisserie, The evolution of hippopotamuses and the significance of the fossil hippos from the Baynunah Formation, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

11:35 – 11:45: Q & A.

11:45 – 12:05: Brian Kraatz, New small mammals of the Baynunah Formation from the Al Gharbia Region, United Arab Emirates.

12:05 – 12:15: Q & A.

12:15 – 12:30: Dhuhr Prayer Time

12:30 – 13:30: Lunch Time

13:30 – 13:50: Ilaria Mazzini, Reconstructing environmental changes in the past: The contribution of micro-crustaceans.

13:50 – 14:00: Q & A.

14:00 – 14:20: Johannes Müller & Jason J. Head, Reptiles and Amphibians of Arabia, and their Fossil History.

14:20 – 14:30: Q & A.

14:30 – 14:50: William J. Sanders, Last gomphotheres and first elephants at the crossroads of evolution: Evidence from the Baynunah Formation.

14:50 – 15:00: Q & A.

15:00 – 15:30: Asr Prayer Time & Tea Break

15:30 – 15:50: John R. Stewart, The Arabian Wetlands of the Miocene: The Avian Evidence.

15:50 – 16:00: Q & A.

16:00 – 16:20: Kevin Uno, Straight from the horse’s mouth: Isotopic
evidence for seasonality in vegetation and hydroclimate in Abu Dhabi during the late Miocene.

16:20 – 16:30: Q & A.

16:30 – 17:00: Closing Discussion.