Introduction

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence for settlement patterns in Arabia in the period A.D. 565-750 is still very unsatisfactory when compared with the levels of information available for other areas being dealt with in this Workshop. Despite its general paucity, the extent of archaeological recording in Saudi Arabia, the country with which I will be primarily concerned, has greatly increased since the days of H.St.J. Philby, the epigraphic investigations by Winnett and Reed in 1962 or the archaeological survey carried out by Parr, Dayton and Harding in 1968 in NW Saudi Arabia. The fieldwork by Winnett and Reed and by Parr et al. was limited in its region of concentration, but the reports of both expeditions remain important and influential studies for the north and north-west down to the present.

It was with these very limited antecedents that a five year archaeological survey was initiated by the Department of Archaeology of Saudi Arabia in 1976. This survey was planned to encompass the entire country, to be carried out on a regional basis. The task of recording in so short a period and over so vast an area was formidable. The personnel of these surveys changed over time, and the level of observation, record and conclusion varied markedly from report to report. Furthermore, the surveys were concerned with all archaeological periods from the Palaeolithic to the Late Islamic. In these circumstances, relatively little attention was given to Islamic archaeology. If Islamic archaeology as a whole was relatively neglected, the degree of attention given to the time span of interest to this workshop- ca. A.D. 565-750- was still less.

Some conception of the extent of the problem of conducting a comprehensive archaeological survey in so vast a country as Saudi Arabia is indicated by the calculations of the very first team to work on the Saudi survey in 1976. Based on their progress in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom where the team managed on average to conduct a surface survey over 150 sq. km. a day, they reckoned that it would take fifty years of continuous work before their method of procedure could encompass the entirety of Saudi Arabia. This observation is important in putting the process of this survey into perspective and to explain why the record of settlement types is so lacking in detail. There is still a very long way to go in any terms, let alone within the narrow historical period with which we are concerned here.