PALÉORIENT, vol. 13/1 - 1987

THE DESERT "KITES" OF THE BADIYAT ESH-SHAM AND NORTH ARABIA

S. HELMS and A. BETTS

hunting technology from the Neolithic up to more recent periods.

I. Introduction

'He is the strongest on the steppe...

The pits which I dug he has filled in again;

The traps which I set he has torn up.

He helps the game and animals of the steppe

to escape out of my hand And does not allow me to catch the game of the steppe. '

(Gilgamesh Epic Tab. Iii. 30-39)

Thus a hunter or trapper, perhaps a villager, complains about the hero Enkidu who disrupts his hunting in the steppe. The traps which are mentioned are not identified, but the terminology ('pits', 'traps... torn up'), the locale, and even perhaps the reality behind the myth refer to a form of (supplementary) subsistence economy whose history and prehistory form an important aspect of steppic archaeology. Recent researches now allow one specific steppic hunting technique to be traced back to the prehistoric period.

While it is likely that the 2nd millennium text (perhaps with a Sumerian Vorlage) refers to a specialized form of steppic hunting which involved a variety of animals, later ethnographic parallels refer predominantly to gazelles. It is suggested here that the so-called 'desert kites of Arabia', a series of them which may be divided into types, were used to trap gazelles.

The archaeology of the steppic regions (dry : 100-200 mm rain/annum; wet: 200-300 mm rain/ annum) in the Near East is still in its infancy. The 'kites' lie mostly in the dry steppe. These regions are

important throughout pre-history and up to the present, for it is there that three basic economies flourished : hunting and gathering, nomadic pastora- lism (sheep/goat) and camel herding — the latter two the acknowledged economic and socio-political counterbalance to settled life in the historical periods. From the earliest available textual record (1) it is clear that no historical reconstruction is possible without considering these regions. The populations of the steppic zones have been a significant factor in socio-political development. For the pre-historical periods, prior to the 3rd or, at the earliest, the second half of the 4th millennium, even less information was to hand until recently. It is proposed here that a complete, continuous human socio-economic development may be traceable in terms of adaptive strategies and resultant economic systems which were related to those of the populations in the verdant regions, but were also sometimes independent of them. The use of 'kites' represents one important facet of such systems.

We are dealing with four sub-zones in the Near East : the Sinai peninsula (and the Negev), North Arabia, the Syrian Desert (including the Badiyat esh-Sham) and the Jezirah straddling the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Of these, the Badiyat esh-Sham and particularly the volcanic regions east and south of Jebel Druze, provide the best source of information. Structure and formation of the land provided ample building materials, and since this sub-zone was never settled intensively, much of what was built

1959.

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