Paul Alan Yule

Yule’s study of the prehistory of Oman of the 1990s deals with the tower tombs of Jaylah on the Jebel Akhdar, which date to the 3rd millennium BCE. The site of Samad al-Shan sheds light on late prehistory in Oman. It yields south-eastern Arabian artefacts of different periods. A further project, the cataloguing of the metal hoard find from Ibri-Selme, which he published with Gerd Weisgerber (†), concentrates on the largest hoard of metallic artefacts to occur in the Near East. It contains finds largely of the Early Iron Age. Presently he is studying the Iron Age metal-finds from a workshop context at the site of al-Safah in al-Zahirah province.

Yule’s work at the site of Zafar, capital of the Himyarite Confederation, in the Yemen, began in 1998 and illuminates especially on the culture of the Himyarite period (110 BCE – ca. 525 CE). He argues that Himyarite culture is not really foreign to Islam but actually is a sire which passed on its genes. One wonders what Islamic religion and culture certainly inherited influence from Himyar. Excavated finds contradict the characterisation of Himyarite culture as somehow decadent.

His Gazetteer of Archaeological Sites is a source for the archaeological sites of the Sultanate of Oman and is being developed for the entire Arabian Gulf.

• Archaeology of Arabia
• Oman archaeometallurgy