Samad al-Shan

Missing, but expected, are clothing, leather articles such as shoes, liquid containers and shields, arrow shafts, bows and woven basketry.

[4] Regardless of their origin, as they are known today the Samad Late Iron Age population are date farmers and not herders, who migrate between winter and summer pasturage.

However, there are several stages of transition from herders to settlers, from pastoralists to nomads and pastoral life is an essential part of farming.

Not copies of tents, but rather of houses, the heavy stone graves show their makers' value for a sedentary kind of dwelling in the afterlife.

This population may be understood as migrants from South Arabia to Oman on the strength of an oral historical account (the Arabic Kashf al-Ghumma), written down centuries after the fact.

The Late Iron Age differs in terms of pottery from that distributed in central Oman and in the neighbouring present-day United Arab Emirates.

[9] Evidence appears in absolute terms from c. 100 BCE to c. 300 CE to date the relative chronological Samad Late Iron Age.

Given the relative small amount of research, it is not possible to prove the transition from the Early Iron Age in absolute terms, which is often considered to end around 300 BCE.

The Samad Late Iron Age is little researched, based mainly on one excavation report of over 250 graves at the type-site, notwithstanding later re-interpretations.

Decades after several European historians declared Oman to be a colony of Persia, perhaps during the 6th century BCE, the appearance of the Samad Late Iron Age assemblage and the so-called pre-Islamic recent period[15] now are proven at over 80 sites, in contrast to a lack of sites with Persian finds in south-eastern Arabia.

Today we have more sophisticated historical models for south-eastern Arabia than simply as an ancient Persian colony over the centuries, which in light of archaeological finds is implausible.

Central Oman's main importance seems to have been a strategic one for foreign powers interested in securing their own sea trade and interdicting that of competitors.

To explain this, we must assume a change from the original material culture of the immigrants to the Samad assemblage as we know it, which perhaps took a couple of generations.

The burial custom shows weak evidence in the graves for a monogamous core family structure, perhaps like that of the Mahra tribes.