New Iron Age funerary data from collective graves in Wādī FizΉ,northern Oman Bleda S. Düring, Eric Olijdam & Sam A. Botan Summary In the 2016 campaign of the Wādī al-Jīzī Archaeological Project a rich collection of Iron Age funerary artefacts was found from disturbed (probably collective) burials in Wādī FizΉ. These graves have relatively few comparanda in eastern Arabia and are therefore of some significance for our understanding of this period. In this paper, we will first discuss the broader Iron Age cultural landscape of Wādī FizΉ, and then focus on the cemetery site. We subsequently discuss the pottery, soft-stone vessels, and miscellaneous artefacts retrieved from these grave contexts, and compare our data with those from other sites in Oman and the Emirates. Keywords: Wādī FizΉ, collective burials, Iron Age, soft -stone vessels, ceramics Introduction This paper will present new Iron Age funerary data discovered in Wādī FizΉ in the northern BāΓinah region of Oman. These data were obtained in the 2016 season of the Wādī al-Jīzī Archaeological Project (WAJAP). This is a systematic and multi-period survey of an area of about 1800 km2 in the region behind modern Сuhār (Fig. 1). The Wādī al-Jīzī region was chosen because it controls one of the few natural passages through the Omani mountains, has major copper deposits, which were exploited from late prehistory onwards, and terminated at a coastal town important over millennia. Investigations started in 2014 and are scheduled to run for a decade (Düring & Olijdam 2015). The key question we want to investigate in this survey project is how we can best understand the fact that for some archaeological periods we have a lot of data (structures and artefacts) whereas other periods are very poorly visible archaeologically, and how to explain this ‘boom and bust’ pattern of occupation. This paper will explore data pertaining to one ‘Dark Age’ in our region (and across much of Oman): the Iron Age I (1300–1000 BC) and its relation to the ubiquitous Iron Age II (Magee 2014: 190; Yule & Weisgerber 2015a: 10). The relevant site, WAJAP-S51, located in Wādī FizΉ, is one of two corridors from the coast to the mountains that we have been investigating. One of our aims is to compare the archaeological remains of these corridors. Already clear differences are becoming apparent. Wādī al-Jīzī has a much greater density of funerary monuments, dating to the Hafīt, Umm an- Nar, Wādī Sūq, and Sasanian periods, than Wādī FizΉ, but lacks settlement data from the Iron Age, which is abundant in Wādī FizΉ. Such contrasts tell us much about the use and perception of the landscape in the past. In our survey region there are tens of thousands of small single-person cairns with inward sloping retaining walls. Based on shape and size, this type of cairn has often been dated to the Iron Age (e.g. Frifelt 1975: 373). Among the thousands of cairns of this type that we documented, however, as well as the dozens excavated in the СuΉār region in rescue work in advance of the BāΓinah Express Way, no Iron Age materials were found. Instead, these cairns were consistently found with turquoise glazed pottery for which an early first- millennium AD date is most likely (Düring & Olijdam 2015: 103), as indicated by glass, metal objects, and stamp seals. Cairns of this type are clustered in the direct hinterlands of the СuΉār coastal plain, and disappear further away from the coast. By contrast, the known Iron Age and Bronze Age settlements, apart from Tell al-Shabūl (WAJAP–S54), 1 are all located in the foothills of the Дajar al-Gharbī, where water sources are located, at some distance from the cairn fields. This, therefore, raises the interesting question: where are the Iron Age graves actually located and 1 The site, a small tell, was discovered in 1973 by the Harvard Archaeological Survey of Oman (Humphries 1974) and is commonly referred to in the literature as SH11.