First discoveries of the Bāt / al-Arid Mission (Sultanate of Oman)

International audienceDuring winter 2019 the French Archaeological Mission at Bāt and al-Arid (MBA) conducted a first season of investigations jointly on both sites of Bāt and al-Arid (15 km North-West of Bāt), in Central Oman. This article aims to present the first results obtained during the 2019 fieldwork: a microregional study of the site and first excavations of al-Arid, and new records in the necropolis of Bāt. The site of al-Arid is a promising new Bronze Age site in the area of Ibri. It contains five or probably six, Umm an-Nar towers, a Bronze age necropolis with Hafit and Umm an-Nar tombs, a Bronze age settlement dated to the second part of the 3rd millennium BC, and an irrigation channel that might be related to the Bronze age complex. The al-Arid site is quite interesting and useful to help to understand the territory of Bāt, today exposed to rapid urbanization. It documents the remains of an elaborate settlement occupied on a recurrent, if not permanent basis, during the Early Bronze Age, which has never been excavated before. The first results presented here indicate the great archaeological potential of the al-Arid site, and its potential to better understand the emergence of socio-economic complexity in central Oman