The bay of Ra’s al-Jinz (Oman) constitutes a single archaeological compound, with a continuous occupational history from the 6th millennium BCE onwards. The main occupation, RJ-2, is one of the foremost Bronze Age settlements in the region, providing a well-documented sequence of over 500 years throughout the Umm an-Nar period (ca. 2500-2000 BCE). The monograph edited by V. Azzarà and G. Gernez will present the data of the French-Italian excavations conducted at Ra’s al-Jinz from 1985 to 2011, under the scientific direction of Serge Cleuziou† (University of Paris 1) and Maurizio Tosi (University of Bologna). The publication of stratigraphic data, architectural layout and material culture from RJ-2 will provide extensive and reliable data on Early Bronze Age coastal Oman, and will shed new light on local and long-distance interactions involving the area during the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Additionally, the analysis of anthropogenic vestiges detected in the whole bay, and spanning for more than three millennia, will constitute the opportunity to address the emergence of complex societies at the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, the climax of social complexification characterising the 3rd millennium BCE, and the still elusive evidence of Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age coastal communities in the coastal Sharqiyyah.
The lead researchers on the project are Valentina Azzará and Guillaume Gernez
