CAIRNS AND BURIAL MOUNDS

During the French archaeological missions carried out in Qatar from 1976 to 1981, a group of 18 burials located on an isolated mound on the south-western edge of the Sebkha (a mound that corresponds to an island on the shoreline 6,000 years ago), 2 km west of the city of Khor, was discovered. This assemblage has been relatively undisturbed. The presence of tire tracks and the digging of a small shelter for hunting hawks attest to a human passage. They are presented as circular piles of stones. A number of cairns and tumuli have been discovered all over the Arabian Gulf: they are protohistoric tombs. The region of Khor has 13 cairns of different sizes, all dating from the Prehistoric period. One can be assured of a burial in a pit under a cairn having contained a single body with an ankle ring, a rich pectoral ornament made of shells with various beads fished on the spot, an offering near the head. In the same region, the prospecting of the Bay of Khor allowed the discovery, in an island accessible on foot, of two sets. One has apparent remains testifying in favor of a human habitat; the other, more complex, is structured in slabs of marine sandstone with shards of red pottery scattered on the surface.
Who were the men buried at Khor? To which culture did they belong? When did they live? The cemetery offers us the image of a group of homogeneous appearance (morphology of the structures, position of the bodies, ornaments) having to satisfy cultural imperatives. The information on the age of the individuals, however meager, is of great interest: adults and children are represented and it is remarkable that the children's graves are located in the southern half of the cemetery while the adults are in the north. When did they live? In the absence of traditional chronological markers, we will appeal to obsidian. As the obsidian trade declined after Obeid, it is tempting to place our group in the^5th millennium. However, we must be careful not to see in it the inhabitants of one of the Obeidian sites uncovered in Khor Bay; the burial site of Khor F.B., located 2 km from the cemetery and linked to one of these sites, does not evoke any resemblance with the neighboring cairns and invites us to be cautious as to its origins and its interpretation. The only thing we know for sure is that it represents, in the present state of knowledge, the extreme southern point, a sort of "cul de sac", of the obsidian traffic.