LE RICERCHE DELLA MISSIONE ARCHEOLOGICA DELLA SAPIENZA NELLA PENISOLA ARABICA E NEL GOLFO (MASPAG) IN OMAN SETTENTRIONALE

Abstract

The Sapienza Archaeological Mission in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf (MASPAG) is an interdisciplinary
research team founded in the Sapienza’s Department of Sciences of Antiquity in 2020 to support,
undertake and promote excavations, surveys, anthropological researches and epigraphic-linguistic studies
in the Arabian Peninsula and in the countries of Gulf. The mission currently operates in northern Oman in
collaboration with the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism of the Sultanate of Oman, and since 2019 thanks to
the funding of Sapienza Grandi Scavi to which was added in 2022 the recognition and a co-financing of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The interdisciplinary research team is supporting
the completion of the decennial excavation of the very rich collective grave LCG-2 at Dibba¯ al-Bayah in
the Musandam Peninsula which dates back to the end of the Bronze Age, a possible excavation on the stratified
settlement of Shokur, next to the Dhank Oasis in northwestern Oman and a new project of landscape
archaeology in the southern Batinah in between the oasis of Nakhal, al-’Awabi and Wadi al-Ma’awil. The
conclusion of the excavation of LCG-2 at Dibba¯ al-Bayah, the possible excavation at Shokur and the new
surveys and excacations in southern Batinah project Maspag’s researches towards an integrated study of the
funerary, settlement and landscape contexts of central-northern Oman, from the beginning of the Bronze
Age to the end of the Iron Age. This extension of research to the integrated study of funerary contexts,
human mobility and adaptation in central-northern Oman intends to refine our historical- geographical
knowledge of nomadism in south-eastern Arabia, i.e. of those nomadic cultures with a strong territorial and
political identity recorded in the Syrian and Mesopotamian texts since the second half of the 3rd Millennium
BCE such as the Civilization of Magan.