Archeologists Rushing to Study Ancient Graves

Archeologists have begun hastily excavating hundreds of ancient burial mounds seeking clues to early civilization before the graves and their treasures are overrun by a highway project.

They are hoping to retrieve implements and artifacts that in ancient times were buried with the dead and today serve as pieces to the puzzle of what life was like centuries ago. Some of the graves date back to 2000 BC.

The highway project is intended to provide a road network for a newly opened 15-mile causeway that links this Persian Gulf island to Saudi Arabia.

Bahrain has more than 170,000 burial mounds, of which about 3,000 have been fully investigated. In addition to the hundreds threatened by the highway project, an additional 300 are to be lost to new housing developments in the Hamad Town area of the island.

4,000 Years Old

The most ancient mounds are about 4,000 years old, but some date to comparatively recent times, from 300 BC to AD 200.

Early European visitors to Bahrain believed the island was a burial center used by ancient people from the mainland.

However, more recent investigations suggest that the island was once the focal point of the ancient Dilmun civilization, which flourished in the Persian Gulf area thousands of years ago.

The Bahrain of those days was greener and had a lot more fresh water than it does now. Excavations indicate that several different civilizations lived on the island and that all used the burial-mounds systems.

Accurate Records Sought

Jean-Francois Salles, a French archeologist working on the island, said it is important to get accurate records of the mounds before they disappear. His team is excavating mounds that are about to make way for the traffic system on the causeway link roads.

Research of the mounds indicates that Bahrain was one of the main centers of civilization in the Persian Gulf area, Salles said.

He added that the richest tombs probed by his team have been those of children.

“It may be a coincidence, but the ornaments are much more numerous there,” he said.

Chambers in Layers

Burial chambers in the mounds are piled on top of each other, sometimes generations apart, facing different ways and often destroying older chambers underneath.

A senior antiquities officer with the Bahrain government, Abdul-Aziz Suweileh, said the teams have until June to complete their investigations.

Among recent finds in the mounds have been a Bronze Age javelin and ax heads dating to the third millennium BC and a 4,000-year-old pot traced to ancient Oman.

One find particularly excited the archeologists: a 4,000-year-old pearl-and-gold earring, the oldest found in the Middle East.

Corethia Qualls, an archeology professor from West Chester, Pa., working here on a Fulbright grant, said the finds in Bahrain may not be anywhere near as exciting as those of Egypt but they show that the standard of living here was high.

‘Treasure Trove’

“The Egyptian tombs focus on the rulers,” she said, “but here, everyone was buried. Bahrain is a treasure trove in ancient seals, made from sea shells, used by the ancient Dilmun civilization on its trade network.”

For the archeologists, such small things are important parts in putting together a picture of a civilization long past.