Thanks to a excavation campaign started in 2024 in the Hayy Al-Sarh area, near the city of Rustaq in Oman, the remains of a camp of the Neolithic dating back to the 3600-3400 BC, brought to light within the international project ‘Prehistoman’ emerged. The project, directed by Niccolò Mazzucco of the University of Pisa, in Co-Direction with Khaled Douglas and Nasser Al-Jahwari of Sultan Qaboos University, takes place with the approval of the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism of Oman and with the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Italian International Cooperation.
The mission aims to study the prehistoric occupation of the internal areas of Oman, still little known today. Most of the evidence relating to the populations of hunter-racketors-pockets come from excavations carried out along the coast, in the area of the current capital, Muscat, and Ja’lān.
A total area of about 60 square meters was opened on the Hayy Al-Sarh website, identifying an archaeological layer with remains of a camp dating back to the end of the Neolithic. Particularly important is the discovery of a housing structure, a pseudo-circular hut, probably built with a wooden frame, of which the pole holes remain, and then covered with branches. It is a home very similar to the examples found on the coast in the Ras al Hamra area. Around various areas of combustion and fire structures were discovered, as well as an area intended for chipping and lithic production, with the presence of characteristic arrow of double -sided holling.
“The discovery of an archaeological structure in a stratigraphic context is a very rare event in Oman, where most of the prehistoric testimonies are documented on the surface, through remains of structures often little preserved and dispersions of artifacts – comments Professor Mazzucco – the good conservation of the site in stratigraphy has allowed to collect a greater number of champions for bioarcheological and paleo -trained analyzes, as well as dating the structure, through the radiocarbon technique at 3600-3400 BC “.
The camp had to be near a seasonal wet area, as indicated by the pollinical and geomorphological investigations preliminary “. On the basis of the raw materials found and chipped on the site, as well as the ornaments in the shell present, it seems that the human group that occupied Hayy Al-Sarh moved to a large area, from the coast to the Al Hajar mountain range, pushing up to the area of the current city of Bisea, for distances as the air above 150 km.
Future research aims to complete the excavation of the camp and identify new anthropic structures on the site, probably very extensive and with large areas still to be explored.