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The ancient cultures of Southern Arabia are increasingly recognised as playing as major a role in the heritage of mankind as the early cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia or the Indus Valley. The beginning of the widely known Sabaean culture dates back to the end of the second millennium BC. Whereas, undoubtedly, its wealth came mainly from the trade along the Incense Road, the backbone of its economy was irrigated agriculture. Since agriculture is based on soil and water resources and, hence, land availability, the buried soils and sediments of the area surrounding the Ma’rib Oasis have been investigated, both as an archive of Holocene soil development in Pre-Sabaean times and as ‘natural treasures’, as, for example, ores or alabaster are defined. The natural buried Holocene soils around Ma’rib are rich in phosphate, organic material and volcanic ashes. In a few places they demonstrate cultivation before the Great Dam of Ma’rib was built in the first millennium BC. Most important are those soils that formed during the Neolithic between 8000 and 3000 BC, a time before the permanent settlement of humans in the Bronze Age, and before the arrival of those of the early Sabaean period at the Ar-Rub’ Al-Khali desert margin. Since the area surrounding the oasis shows a huge variety of landscapes, such as dune belts, volcanic fields with archaeological structures and different soils, it is worth accentuating the significance of Holocene soils as an important record or archive of land use. As well as classical soil analysis, AMS- 14C-datings, the results of phytolith analysis and geochemistry, including XRF data, have been taken into consideration.

Irrigation played an important role throughout ancient Southwest Arabian histories. Irrigation structures provide some of the earliest evidence of crop agriculture and large-scale flash floodwater irrigation systems sustained ancient states; the region thus offers important potential for reconsidering links between irrigation and social change. This paper examines millennia-long connections between social relations and the increasing technological and organizational complexity of irrigation in ancient Yemen. While the hydraulic hypothesis in its original deterministic formulation does not adequately account for the complexity and diversity of regional histories, large centrally managed irrigation systems played an indisputably significant role in Southwest Arabian state formation. Irrigation not only generated the food to sustain burgeoning populations but, just as importantly, afforded ancient kings the ideological prestige of commanding transformation of hyper-arid areas into lush, bountiful oases.

The authors present a remarkable site with a remarkable interpretation: a structured platform of dugong bones, containing skulls laid in parallel and ribs in sets, together with artefacts of the Neolithic period. They propose that the bones have been symbolically arranged and the mound as a whole had a ritual purpose – an interpretation endorsed by analogy with dugong platforms noted in the Torres Strait in recent times.

In 2005, at Beidha, a northern suburb of the Nabataean capital of Petra, the remains of an elaborately decorated freestanding building were uncovered. Although little of the structure remains, architectural elements found at the site make it possible to propose a tentative reconstruction of the building, the main part of which was a colonnaded hall or oecus approached through a courtyard. The oecus may have been a triclinium of the Nabataean ruler Malichos I (59/58-30 B.C.E.). The elements uncovered display a wealth of imported Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Eastern architectural and artistic ideas adapted to local use. The building is located in an area that was a wine-production center in the Nabataean era, and the decorative program of the oecus is Dionysian. This article argues that the complex, which was abandoned shortly after it went into use, was built to extol tryphé (living in luxury) and to link the Nabataean royal house to Dionysos and Alexander.

This paper argues that the trade in leather and other pastoralist products, which the tradition ascribes to the Meccans, could make sense on the assumption that the goods were destined for the Roman army, which is known to have required colossal quantities of leather and hides for its equipment. The hypothesis that the Meccans were servicing the Roman military is examined and found to be impossible to prove in our current state of knowledge; it is at least compatible with the evidence, however, and also highly promising in terms the light it could throw on the political aspects of the rise of Islam.

  King examines the Arabic poetry, which is replete with the imagery of scent. Among the prized scents, musk and ambergris are the most important, followed by several other substances. These most prized aromatics originated from outside the Arabian Peninsula. Aromatics of Arabian origin are quite rare in Arabic poetry in general. One reason for this is the high value accorded to imported goods. Rare and expensive goods conveyed a sense of status to the people who possessed them, and, by association with the aristocracy who could afford them, the goods themselves became even more desirable. It is this prestige, at least in part, that prompted poets to use these substances in their similes. There is a strong continuity in their use as images in poetry, compounded by the Islamic associations they acquired.

The 2007 edition of the \"Archaeology in Jordan\" newsletter presents short reports on recent excavations and archaeological projects in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Here, Savage, Keller, and Tuttle present the details of these reports, which are organized geographically, from north to south.