However, we’re now learning that AlUla was more than just a place to transit, it was a true nexus and a home for complex communities across thousands of years.” AlUla was seen as just a region people passed through. “North-west Arabia has often been overlooked as a place of cultural and civilisational importance in and of itself,” explains Dr Rebecca Foote, Director of Archaeology & Cultural Heritage Research at RCU, “For many years, its importance has been eclipsed by the nearby Fertile Crescent, riverine Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and the marine civilisations along the Red Sea. As a result, while AlUla is best known for the Nabataean tombs of Hegra, Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage site, over 27,000 other archaeological sites have been identified within its borders with more set to be discovered and recorded in the coming months.

Yet, crucially, amid this hard landscape is a fertile oasis valley that has long sustained life and the wider area has drawn people and civilisations for more than 200,000 years.

In what has become one of the world’s most active archaeological explorations, experts are beginning to fill in missing links in our understanding of the region’s human history with new discoveries – and further announcements are expected soon.ĪlUla, in north-west Saudi Arabia, is a region of deserts and arid mountains. As winter approaches and international travel allows, archaeological work is resuming in AlUla, a historically rich region that has been relatively untouched in comparison to similar places. “If the mustatil developed as a response to ancient climate and environmental change this gives us an important insight into how early communities faced these challenges and how their belief systems adapted to these new or changing realities,” Kennedy wrote.Amid a vast and enigmatic monumental landscape, forgotten kingdoms, and layers of history, archaeologists are only just beginning to reveal the secrets of this heritage jewel in north-west Saudi Arabia. The researchers hope that this will help us better understand the development of civilization in ancient Saudi Arabia.

The fact that the similar religious belief appears may spread across a huge area is unparalleled anywhere in the world at this early date.”Īs part of a new archeological project, the Prehistoric AlUla and Khaybar Excavation Project (PAKEP), the researchers will be excavating more mustatil in order to gather more detailed environmental and climatological information for the region between the Neolithic and Bronze Age. “Prior to this, it was believed that there was not much interaction between the different parts of northern Arabia during this period, we now know that is not the case. “The fact that people appear to have journeyed to these structures suggests we have an early form of pilgrimage in the region,” Kennedy wrote. The discovery also suggests that these mustafils could have been the destination of repeated pilgrimages, and migration across the land. As such, there may be a link with ancient climate and environmental change as Arabia gradually became increasingly arid, like it is today.”

We also suggest that there may be an association with water, as most mustatil point towards areas that hold water. “We speculate that the mustatil were built as a form of community bonding, with multiple groups coming together to construct them. “We believe these remains are offerings to an unknown deity or deities represented by the central stone,” lead author Melissa Kennedy of the University of Western Australia wrote in an email to Motherboard. The authors argue the close proximity likely indicates the area is a site of animal offerings. The researchers identified 7000 year-old fragments of animal skulls and horns, primarily from domestic cattle, found close to a large upright stone that is part of a 140 meter-long mustatil located 55 miles east of the city of AlUla. Mustatils are rectangular, low-walled, stone structures that range from 20 to 600 m in length.

Alula archeology