Another side to the story. Preliminary results from the renewed excavations on the eastern flank of Tell Abraq (2021-2022)

Excavations on the eastern flank of Tell Abraq, within the territory of the emirate of Umm Al Quwain, during the 2021 and 2022 field seasons, yielded remarkable results that help to better understand how the site was occupied in the second half of the 2nd and throughout the 1st millennium BCE. Evidence for several phases in the site's occupation is connected with buildings and features characterised by largely differing architecture, dimensions and associated materials, before a final switch (in the Late Pre-Islamic period) to the funerary use of the area, with several burials that were likely the target of later robbing. Scattered artefacts, comprising exceptional items unique in the UAE, might be referred to the original inventory of these graves, as contemporary architecture has not been discovered so far. Some of these artefacts illustrate the strong influence of foreign productions conveyed both overland from South Arabia and oversea, via Characene, during the first centuries CE.