Harald Ingholt Lecture in Middle Eastern Archaeology

Lecturer: Dr. Richard Fletcher

Abstract: Prehistoric burial cairns have been a subject of archaeological investigation in Qatar since national development began in the 1950s. The study of various aspects of the burial mounds has yielded substantial evidence, with over 2,000 burials identified. Recent survey projects estimate a density of up to 10 mounds per km2 for the peninsula as a whole. A Qatar Museums project, in collaboration with Sidra Medicine, is testing this estimate through remote sensing to map the burial cairns, using aerial photography, satellite imagery, and LiDAR, and ground truthing results through field survey. Results for an area of 30,000 km2 in northern Qatar indicate 10,782 burials, with a clear pattern of preference in the north-west opposite the island of Bahrain.T he results of the project support the hypothesis that nomads in the desert of northern Qatar were moving between Bahrain and Qatar, probably on a seasonal basis.