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UAE-French archaeologists excavate Hili Park grave

AL AIN - A joint UAE-French archaeological team has started excavating the intermediate level of Grave N of Hili Archaeological Park, an 8m pit-grave that was discovered by the Al Ain Department of Antiquities and Tourism (DAT) in the 1980s.

The DAT has left the central part of the deposit untouched for about 10 years and to preserve it from erosion, they approached the French Archaeological Mission in the UAE, funded by the Archaeological Division of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to carry out an excavation as part of a joint project.

Speaking to Khaleej Times, Dr Sophie Mery, of the National Centre for Scientific Research, France, (CNRS) and head of the French team, said: "We have conducted five seasons of excavation in this site and we are now starting on the sixth." She also pointed out: "This collective tomb dates back to the end of the 3rd millennium BC and contains more than 550 dead bodies of adults and children, both males and females, according to Dr McSweeney. "Some of the babies below one year old were possibly buried under the floor of the dwellings as in the contemporary early Bronze Age settlement site of Ra's al Jinz in the Sultanate of Oman" she added.

The Hili pit-grave "was used almost continuously for two centuries at most, and the Hili people were buried with some of their belongings such as pottery, soft-stone vessels, ornaments such as carnelian beads imported from the Indus Valley, silver and lapis lazuli beads from Afghanistan and bronze rings," she added.

Dr Mery also said, "According to Dr Gatto and Dr McSweeney, high rates of mortality among those people was normal for a traditional population and that most of the population died before they reach 40 years of age." She added, "We have so far identified around 850 pottery vessels from the pit-grave, most having been locally made or from other regions of the UAE or the Sultanate of Oman. The rest were imported from the Indus Valley in Pakistan, Baluchistan and Makran as well as southern Mesopotamia." Through studying these artifacts, using experimentation with potters, "I try to understand the technology used by the Hili and UAE potters by comparing it to vessels that were imported from other parts of the Gulf and the northern part of the Indian Ocean," she said.

This experimental research programme, to be conducted for the first time in the UAE, by producing shapes and dimensions of pottery that resemble the original ones, is an attempt to discover the methods used at the end of the third millennium. "We have so far concluded that some form of potters' wheels were used for the shaping of most of the vessels, but the variety of local techniques was wide and testifies that this was a period of innovation in technology," she added.

Mr Gagnaison, one of the geologists of the mission, has this year identified techniques of shaping the stones used in the construction of the Umm an-Nar graves at Hili. Thus, we are able to understand better than before the chronology of the dozen tombs in the cemetery, she said. "The oldest dates back to more than 2700-2600BC, whereas the newest dates back to 2000BC," she added.

The method of burial, "indicates that the Hili people were very careful in taking care of their dead. The graves at Hili were very close to the village, actually integrated within it," she said. In the case of the pit-grave now under excavation, it seems that the Hili people used to burry their dead ones immediately after death directly in this pit-grave and, as far as we know, the bones had not been relocated from the nearby grave; she said. "However, we will not know this for certain until our excavations are complete," she added.