Compared to most other parts of the Middle East, South Arabia has seen less archaeological research conducted over a much shorter timeline of exploration. However, beginning in the 1980s and increasing throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, a wealth of information has flowed from a variety of archaeological projects. Unfortunately, owing to current political developments and instabilities, most archaeological field research in Yemen has been put on hold. However, the current pause in fieldwork affords an opportunity for taking stock of what research has taken place, the value of the information recovered, and where future research might be most fruitfully directed. Schiettecatte's book may be most important for its contribution to these endeavours, although its stated academic purpose is to investigate the nature and development of ancient South Arabian cities.
South Arabia remains for many a marginal and little-known aspect of Ancient Near Eastern studies. The ancient South Arabian cultural sphere encompassed the area that forms modern-day Yemen, along with parts of western Oman and south-west Saudi Arabia. Although in this region evidence for human occupation goes back to the Palaeolithic period and continues virtually uninterrupted until the present day, the “classical” period of pre-Islamic South Arabian civilization is generally considered to be the first millennium bc to the first few centuries of the Common Era. These centuries saw the political dominance of a series of local, competing tribal-based kingdoms, and it is the towns of this late pre-Islamic period that are the primary focus of Schiettecatte's book.
Schiettecatte first orients the reader with an overview of the regional environment, culture historical chronology, and relevant historical sources for this region. He then considers the always troubling issue of what should constitute a working definition for an ancient city, in this case in the ancient South Arabian cultural context. Of particular note is Schiettecatte's discussion of words referring to towns in ancient South Arabian languages and inscriptions, which adds an interesting dimension to the issue of what a city was in this context. There was no one word for city in the ancient South Arabian languages, but rather a number of terms that suggest possible indigenous categorizations based on differing functions for settlements. This is an important reminder to be cautious about imposing modern concepts on the ancient world, and it is to Schiettecatte's credit that he continues to use these categories to assess the archaeological remains he discusses throughout the book rather than simply presenting them by way of introduction.
The heart of this book is an examination of many of the major known ancient settlement sites of ancient South Arabia, organized by geographical and cultural sub-region. Within his discussion of each region he begins with a summary of the specific cultural and geographical issues at stake, and ends with an overview analysis of the population dynamics in that area. The presentation mainly consists, however, of a series of site descriptions, including a history of research at each highlighted site and a bibliography of relevant publications. Chronologically, Schiettecatte's main period of interest is clearly the classical South Arabian period and the height of pre-Islamic urbanism in the region, although where enough data is available his analyses of population dynamics do take into consideration all pre-Islamic periods including prehistory. He also profiles a few prehistoric sites that are particularly significant to our understanding of the emergence of local urban lifeways.
Schiettecatte's analytic focus is at the level of entire towns. Even when a site has been excavated, he does not spend a lot of time detailing the specifics of excavation finds or stratigraphy, but rather sticks to broader concerns of site size, plan, general dates, and what is known of its political structure and history from the epigraphic record. The volume provides a handy compilation of town plans and research summaries for many of the ancient sites of Southern Arabia, even though almost all of the material presented has been previously published elsewhere. What is more useful is his series of original maps of site distributions for each of his study areas, and for the South Arabian region as a whole. Schiettecatte has obviously undertaken extensive effort to compile maps of all of the known settlement sites in the region, even though he has selected only a limited number to highlight in this study.
The level of analysis possible is necessarily limited by the archaeological data available, which in the case of southern Arabia is still very uneven. For some parts of the region, as we see in this volume, years of research provide fairly detailed windows into ancient settlement and socio-political structures. However, there are also vast areas where little or no research has taken place. Within those constraints, his overarching analyses of the cultural trajectories for each region are reasonable, although a weakness of the book is that the author does not really provide a substantial overall perspective at the end to assess the possible relationships between the local cultural sequences he presents.
The greatest strength of this book is Schiettecatte's familiarity with both the indigenous epigraphic record and the archaeological remains. It is rare to see both major forms of evidence on South Arabia handled with equal confidence and brought together to address a common theme as seamlessly as Schiettecatte does. While not intended for a general non-archaeological reader, this book does provide a significant window into this often overlooked but important ancient region. It also serves as a wonderful compilation of near-comprehensive references to the archaeology of South Arabia. Besides being a useful handbook for South Arabian archaeologists, the volume may be of use to archaeologists working in adjacent regions or as a way to include a South Arabian dimension to courses on the archaeology of the Ancient Near East.
