7000 year-old houses discovered on Marawah island ABU DHABI, Jan 4, 2004 (WAM) -- A group of stone houses nearly 7,000 years old have been found on Abu Dhabi's Western island of Marawah, it is announced today. They are the oldest buildings of their type ever discovered in the United Arab Emirates. The discovery was made by a team from the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey, ADIAS, working in association with the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency, ERWDA, who are responsible for management of the island's wildlife and environment as part of the Marawah Marine Protected Area, MMPA. During work at a site known as MR-11 in spring 2003, ADIAS examined a group of stone mounds, and uncovered three buildings. One of these structures was fully excavated and revealed a well-constructed house with stone walls still surviving to a height of almost a metre in some places (see Pictures 1 and 2). During the excavations, a fine flint spear and flint arrowhead were found, (see Picture 3), as well as a fragment of a stone pestle, probably used for grinding food items. Samples of ash were taken from the floors of two of the buildings, and were sent to the Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre at the University of Glasgow in Britain, for radiocarbon dating. The results of the dating, recently received by ADIAS, prove that the buildings were in use between 6,500 and 7,000 years ago (see Picture 4). No stone-built houses dating to this particular period are known from elsewhere in the UAE, although similar, but less well-preserved examples have been noted elsewhere in the Arabian peninsula at Shagra in Qatar, and at Sabiyah in Kuwait. The latest discovery confirms the importance of Marawah, north-west of the port of Mirfa, as an important settlement site during the Late Stone Age. During earlier work on the island, ADIAS discovered traces of a number of intriguing stone structures at another site, MR1, to the west of site MR11. Large numbers of flint arrowheads were also collected from the surface of MR1, which was probably an important hunting settlement, and is a few hundred years earlier than the MR11 site. MORE WAM-VV-PH 12 29 CCCCQQE
