Writ in Stone
But time to record and decipher their
mysterious designs may be running out.
An Australian archaeologist is
revealing a new facet of the
early inhabitants of the Hajar
Mountains. And not a moment
too soon, Piers Grimley Evans
discovers.
“During the last winter I made a push to
record as many as possible,” she says. “I
almost felt it was my duty because the sites
are being destroyed.”
Gulf News, 28 May, 2005
http://gulfnews.com/Articles/FeaturesNF.asp?A
rticleID=166730
At his first glance of a petroglyph, a trekker
might think he had stumbled across a piece of
graffiti.
Along with this archaeological conundrum, the
Hajar Mountains are stuffed with valuable
minerals and divided by a widening mesh of
roads. At an abandoned village that is home to
Fujairah’s largest collection of petroglyphs, the
rock art is already under threat.
“Over there was a collection of motifs that was
a reference point for this area’s rock art,”
Ziolkowski says, as we follow a paved track
that leads to a chromite mine. “The rock’s still
there but it was moved when a turning point
was put in the road. The motifs are no longer
visible.”
Dr Michele Ziolkowski in Fujairah
But the graffiti has been there probably about
3,000 years ago, according to Dr Michele
Ziolkowski, the Dubai-based Australian
archaeologist seeking to decipher these
mysterious figures and motifs.
For the last 10 years, Dr Ziolkowski has devoted
her free time to the UAE’s rock art.
Even in summer afternoons, when wadis
become rock-strewn pressure cookers, she
scours the boulders of the Hajar Mountains with
a notebook, camera and GPS in hand. By July
this year, her completed survey will reveal the
surprising prolificacy of the UAE’s prehistoric
taggers.
“The sites need to be mapped,” she says, “so
that when companies want to bulldoze an
area, the Municipality is aware the petroglyphs
are there and can act to protect them.”
Baffling variety
These petroglyphs come in a baffling variety.
A few are clearly figurative – one of the tens
in the valley of the abandoned village is a
naturalistic depiction of an Arabian leopard
(which roamed here until relatively recently)
complete with spots and a bushy tail. Much
more common, though, are geometric designs
or highly stylised figures. Popular motifs
include feet, camels, snakes, riders on horses
and sinister clawed figures with curved
swords. The petroglyph-makers also deployed
a wide repertoire of circles, tear-shapes and
rectangles.
Motifs tend to be less than a foot in height or
width. They appear both alone and grouped
together on the same rock. After millennia some
still stand out pale grey against brown rock
surfaces. Others have faded to become invisible
to an inexpert gaze.
But all, unless you know what to look for, can be
tricky to spot.
“People see me walking around the rocks and
come up to ask me what I am doing,” says
Ziolkowski. “I have to point the motifs out to
them before they see them.”
For Ziolkowski – on the other hand – finding
these figures and designs is routine. She has
catalogued almost 500 examples. As soon as
she identifies one, she immediately records its
position with a GPS and jots down a brief
description.
But to get a photographic record she must
return at dawn when the light is best for picking
out the designs.
Helpful leads
Apart from tackling the Hajar Mountains’
ubiquitous goats (who apparently have an
infuriating taste for notepaper), it is both a
laborious and solitary undertaking. However,
Ziolkowski has not worked entirely in isolation.
She acknowledges the contribution of her father
– who assisted for a month last winter – as well
as of the helpful leads from the Emirates Natural
History Group and the archaeological
departments of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah.
The few communities still living here also
provide excellent sources. “A lot of local people
know about them and want to help,” she says.
“In a village called Roweida, the people even
saved petroglyphs by getting the Municipality to
fence them off.”
But in terms of the official archaeological record,
this rock art is still fresh news. “When I started
working here, my supervisor said there was very
little evidence of rock art in the UAE,” says
Ziolkowski.
“Then we began a survey of sites looking for
signs of early metalworking in the mountains.
As soon as I knew what to look for I started
running across petroglyphs everywhere I
looked.”
The climate of the UAE has changed greatly in
the 3,000 years since the rock art was
created. The Hajar Mountains’ bone-dry
terrain is now sparsely inhabited and rarely
visited.
Almost all were created
with a technique known
as “percussion”. With a
pointed stone, their
makers pecked them into
the patina of desert
varnish – a russet-brown
stain that creeps across
the stones of the Hajar
Mountains as bacteria slowly oxidise
manganese within the rock.
“I experimented to see how the figures were
made,” says Ziolkowski. “It took me about an
hour to copy a small petroglyph of a camel in
a circle using a sharp stone to peck out the
shape. But the effort depends greatly on the
depth of the desert varnish and the flatness of
the stone.”
Unfortunately, the process provides little clue
to the age of the designs. Desert varnish is
not laid down at a constant rate. The clearest
figures are not necessarily the most recent –
so, for now, identifying the petroglyph-makers
relies on drawing comparisons with dateable
artifacts, objects found nearby or in
association with the .
Iron Age origins?
Such evidence points mainly in one direction.
“There are so many parallels with the Iron Age
that they cannot be ignored,” says Ziolkowski.
“I also think that some petroglyphs could be
slightly earlier – this is again based on
comparisons with motifs on dated artefacts.
But even at an individual site they were
probably made over a long period of time.
Some were still being made until the last
century.”
But what do they all mean? We may never
know.
“Many symbols appear very similar to wusum,
the tribal marks that you will find throughout the
deserts of Asia and Africa,” she says. “They are
generally fairly basic geometric designs to mark
the property of a tribe or family. Today, you will
still find them on camels.”
“I can’t prove it, but I believe some petroglyphs
might have been used as geographical markers
for journeys,” she says. “In Roweida, you can
hear this explanation for the markings – and
there are other examples of ancient traditions
apparently surviving. Today, for instance, you
can still find spouted vessels similar to those
used in the Bronze Age.”
Even after 3,000 years, Ziolkowski believes more
light can still be shone on the petroglyph
mystery. “By mapping the precise location of
petroglyphs we can look for patterns that may
offer important information,” she says.
“Experts studying petroglyphs in other parts of
the world, such as Australia and North America,
are also looking for scientific ways to date them
accurately.”
She hopes her new evidence of the true scale
of the UAE’s rock art will increase awareness
of this aspect of the national heritage.
Already, she says, the departments of
antiquity in Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah are
acting with the civic authorities to record and
conserve their petroglyphs.
But the pressure has not lifted just yet. “Even
now when I drive through the mountains I
think, ‘Oh no! There’s another one’. I feel
compelled to get out take a GPS co-ordinate,
get some photographs and make a few notes.
I’m never sure it’s going to be there the next
time.”
“I think there may be many more,” says
Ziolkowski. “I suspect we have only found a
small proportion of what’s out there.”
Who made the petroglyphs?
Direct evidence is scarce, but a series of
intriguing parallels give some clues to the
identity of the petroglyph-makers. An
alabaster “foot” unearthed at Muweilah, in
Sharjah, is one of the principal exhibits in the
petroglyph whodunnit. Footprints crop up
regularly on the rocks of the Hajar Mountains.
The cruciform motif on the foot’s base also
resembles a very common petroglyph.
Like most similar parallels, this foot dates from
the Iron Age.
The Iron Age in the UAE was a period with a
widespread and homogeneous culture.
Settlements popped up in desert, coastal and
mountain areas. The newly domesticated
camels also allowed greater movement and
trade – enabling contact between this region
and Mesopotamia, Bahrain and Iran.
Several local Iron Age finds feature snakes,
another common petroglyph. They appear on
ceramic decorations and in bronze figures in Al
Qusais in Dubai. Intriguingly, snakes crop up at
the spiritual centre of Iron Age settlements.
Another striking resemblance connects
petroglyphs in southern Fujairah and a figure on
a soft-stone pendant unearthed at Tell Abraq.
This shows a human with a sword or dagger. It
has been suggested this might be related to
Lamashtu, an evil demon from Mesopotamia
who appears on amulets in the first millennium
BC.
http://gulfnews.com/Articles/FeaturesNF.as
p?ArticleID=166730
Image of Lamashtu from
http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/gods/explor
e/lamashtu.html
More reading: from UAEInteract.com
http://uaeinteract.com/news/viewnews.asp?
NewsFileName=19980709.htm
An archaeological survey of northern
Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, Leanne
Brass1 and Georgia Britton11The Australian Museum,
Sydney, Australia, Arabian Archaeology and
Epigraphy
Volume 15 Issue 2 Page 149 - November 2004
http://www.blackwellsynergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.16000471.2004.00250.x/abs/?cookieSet=1
Images of petroglyphs from Fujairah from a very
interesting site here, in French:
http://archeo.unige.ch/fuj/