The 1997-1998 campaigns at Khor Rori, Oman - Università degli Studi di Pisa

As attested by inscriptions found in the site, Sumhuram was an outpost of the kingdom of Hadramawt, founded for commercial and economical reasons far from the capital Shabwa, along the Omani coast.
While in a first time it was supposed that the city was founded in the 1st cent. AD, when the trade and the contacts with the Roman world flourished, today we are able to affirm that the city had a longer history. Comparisons with pottery assemblage from other sites (Raybun, Hadramawt) and C14 analysis, attested that the city already existed in the 4th cent. BC. These new data changed the way of looking at the city: Sumhuram was not important just for the trade of frankincense during the Roman period, but it was a wealthy settlement also in a previously time. This importance could be explained considering the city as a crucial stopping place in the internal trade towards south-eastern Arabia and the northern coast of Oman, rich in copper.

The two first archaeological campaigns conducted at Khor Rori in 1997 and 1998 had a preliminary character and were focused in the south-western area of the site.The place selected for these soundings was immediately north from the storage rooms excavated by Albright in 1952 and a complex, similar to the one dug by AFSM, was brought to light.

The architectural characteristics of these buildings and their location let us to suppose they were storage rooms, probably for frankincense, as attested by the finding of frankincense droplets, but the storage of food or grain can not be excluded. The four storage rooms individuated are defined by walls made of roughly cut blocks of limestone, thick 75 cm and with a preserved height of 2.10 m. The lacking of remains of stone stairs makes possible that the buildings were accessible from outside by means of ladder. The architectural layout and the building technique are very similar to those of the contemporary frankincense storage buildings of Qana .Charcoal samples and coins suggest that the process of abandonment of the storage rooms of Sumhuram started at the beginning of the third cent. AD. By this date the rooms were filled in and almost completely obliterated except for two very poor squatting phases. These first excavations permitted the pushing back of the dating of the foundation of the city from I cent. AD to late 1 cent. BC., almost one century earlier than thought until now. During a survey in the area of Khor Rori a large cemetery was identified 2 km north west from Sumhuram. The place, named KR55 and KR56, consists of 400 graves, belonging to two different types: circular tumuli with a diameter of 10 m. circa, and "boat-shaped" graves made of unworked stones arranged in ellipse-shaped plan, suggesting a boat or ship. "Boat-shaped" graves are very common in all Dhofar and have been dated to different periods, from pre-Islamic (Albright, Al-Shahri) to Medieval (Yule).One grave was excavated by IMTO: a body in a flexed position and placed on its right side was found inside without any kind of goods. The bones provided a calibrated radiocarbon determination which confirmed the dating to the Islamic period (920-1020 AD).