An Archeological Reconnaissance in Hadhra- 

 mant, South Arabia — A Preliminary 

 Report 



By Gus W. Van Beek 



Smithsonian Institution 



Glen H. Cole 



Uganda Museum 

 and 



Albert Jamme, W. F. 



Catholic University of America 



[With 8 plates] 



Gtjr knowledge of culture history in the Old World is surprisingly 

 uneven after more than a century of archeological research. For 

 some areas and for certain time periods, such as Dynastic Egypt, 

 Bronze and Iron Age Palestine, and Classical Greece, the outline 

 of culture history has been firmly fixed, and the future task is largely 

 one of refining and filling in details. But for other areas, and for 

 such related studies as interregional contacts, only sketches of the 

 culture history — in varying degrees of completeness — are available, 

 and only within the last decade or so have archeologists devoted 

 themselves to fixing the bare outline. 



Southern Arabia is one of these latter areas. Located on the fringe 

 of lands of great archeological interest, and burdened with a reputa- 

 tion for inhospitality and insalubrity, this region did not receive its 

 first professional archeological mission until 1937. At that time, 

 Gertrude Caton Thompson excavated several structures dating from 

 the fifth to the second centuries B.C. at Hureidha in Hadhramaut 

 (Caton Thompson, 1944). The next field research was carried on 

 by the American Foundation for the Study of Man Arabian Expedi- 

 tions led by Wendell Phillips and under the successive archeological 

 direction of W. F. Albright, F. P. Albright, and E. L. Cleveland in 



521 



