Dr. Lloyd Weeks

During a time where the climate does seem to have downturned for several centuries,

That additional extra advantage in rainfall and groundwater allowed populations to continue living an agricultural life

in the Northern Emirates around Shimul in ways that weren't possible further to the south, in Oman in particular, where we see quite a substantial retraction in settlement.

Indeed, during this period, we're seeing contact being maintained between the Shimul coast and Bahrain.

We've got lots of beautiful Bahraini ceramics making their way to the Northern Emirates at this time, which tell us that contact is still happening at this time period between these two refugia.

Yes, but I would say in the period immediately before then, in the Iron Age, after the end of the Bronze Age, we're looking at one of these periods where actually finding evidence for maritime exchange through the Gulf is a bit more challenging.

It's not as direct and obvious as it is earlier during the Bronze Age.

And we have to work harder to join the dots between the little bits of evidence that we have.

to build up a picture that exchange nevertheless continued in the Gulf at this time, albeit potentially on a smaller scale, certainly less associated with large institutions in Mesopotamian society, for example.

And we're looking at real dearth of evidence in particular areas in Southeastern Arabia, it's scarce, but also in Dilman, Stefan, I believe.

Oh, I think we've hit some of the big picture items from the Bronze Age period.

But of course, as you mentioned, we could dig a lot deeper into all of this material.

I think there's a lot more we could explore in terms of Iran's interconnection into the Gulf system.

That's a story which we only barely touched on.

And I think there's very interesting materials there, as well as the picture from the Indus.

It's a story that could be told in a huge amount of depth if we just had a little more time.