Dilmun – A Bronze Age State Based in Bahrain and Eastern Saudi Arabia

Dilmun, a 2nd millennium BCE polity that interacted with Bronze Age Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilizations, was first identified by a young Harvard graduate student, Peter Cornwall, in 1941. His excavations focused on the large burial features that were conspicuously arranged across the island of Bahrain, leading him to recover several skeletons and objects with which they were buried. His finds are deposited in the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. This talk will describe the collaborative research of Benjamin and Alexis on Cornwall's collection as well as recent findings and analyses, and what they reveal about beliefs on death and the afterlife among the ancient societies of Bahrain.

Dr. Benjamin Porter, an SAA Advisor, is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at UC Berkeley and the curator of Near Eastern Archaeology at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology. He specializes in the Bronze and Iron Age societies of the ancient Middle East. Dr. Alexis Boutin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Sonoma State University and Coordinator of their graduate Cultural Resources Management program. She specializes in the bio-archaeological analysis of ancient Middle Eastern societies.