Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
Museum of Natural History of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
PLoS One. 2023 Mar 15;18(3):e0281904. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281904. eCollection 2023.
Since the 1970s, monumental stone structures now called mustatil have been documented across Saudi Arabia. However, it was not until 2017 that the first intensive and systematic study of this structure type was undertaken, although this study could not determine the precise function of these features. Recent excavations in AlUla have now determined that these structures fulfilled a ritual purpose, with specifically selected elements of both wild and domestic taxa deposited around a betyl. This paper outlines the results of the University of Western Australia's work at site IDIHA-0008222, a 140 m long mustatil (IDIHA-F-0011081), located 55 km east of AlUla. Work at this site sheds new and important light on the cult, herding and 'pilgrimage' in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia, with the site revealing one of the earliest chronometrically dated betyls in the Arabian Peninsula and some of the earliest evidence for domestic cattle in northern Arabia.
自 20 世纪 70 年代以来，沙特阿拉伯各地已经记录了一些被称为 mustatil 的巨大石质结构。然而，直到 2017 年，人们才首次对这种结构类型进行了密集和系统的研究，尽管该研究未能确定这些特征的确切功能。最近在 AlUla 的挖掘工作现在已经确定，这些结构具有仪式用途，在一个 betyl 周围放置了野生和家养分类群的特定选择元素。本文概述了西澳大学在位于 AlUla 以东 55 公里的 IDIHA-0008222 遗址（IDIHA-F-0011081）的工作成果，该遗址长 140 米，是一条 mustatil。该遗址的工作为阿拉伯西北部新石器时代的宗教、放牧和“朝圣”提供了新的重要线索，该遗址揭示了阿拉伯半岛最早的年代测定 betyl 之一，以及阿拉伯北部最早的家养牛证据之一。
