Tracks in the Sand: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Archaeology of Mobile Desert Communities

The archaeology of the desert communities of the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula has received little attention compared to other arid regions such as Australia and the Americas (Smith et al. 2005). This is compounded by the belief that archaeology is incapable of adequately accessing the information left behind by small mobile groups (Rosen 2011). Historically, this idea was particularly pronounced among scholars of the ancient Near East, who regarded the ephemeral remains of tents and largely perishable transportable commodities as beyond the detection of archaeological practices (e.g. Childe 1951: 70), or as representing a severely deficient record requiring supplemental corroboration (Finkelstein and Pervolotsky 1990). This situation led to a reliance on ethnographic and ethno-archaeological approaches to fill the void left by the absence of archaeological data. The persistence of the belief in the archaeological inaccessibility of the data left by mobile desert communities has impeded systematic efforts to refine archaeological approaches which attempt to detect such information (Rosen 2011: 1). These twin empirical and theoretical constraints mean that there is a substantial gap in our understanding of the nomads of Qatar, despite the fact that these groups were active into the second half of the 20th century (see Ferdinand 1993; Montigny 1985). Therefore, the challenge is to develop the methodological tools to be able to access the remains of such mobile desert groups.The Crowded Desert Project is a joint enterprise of UCL Qatar and Qatar Museums, directed by José C. Carvajal López. This work was made possible by NPRP grant 8-1582-6-56 of the Qatar National Research Fund, a member of the Qatar Foundation.Peer reviewe