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A small 4,400-year-old town in Saudi Arabia’s Khaybar Oasis suggests that the region’s Bronze Age inhabitants were slow to urbanize, unlike their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia , according to a new study.

Archaeologists discovered the site near the town of Al-‘Ula, in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia, and named it “al-Natah.” The settlement spanned approximately 3.7 acres (1.5 hectares), “comprising a central neighborhood and a neighboring residential area surrounded by protective walls,” the researchers said in a statement. But the city, occupied from around 2400 BC, was small, with a population of only about 500, the team noted in a study published Wednesday (Oct. 30) in the journal PLOS One.

The residential area contained a large quantity of pottery and grinding stones, as well as the remains of at least 50 dwellings which may have been constructed of earthen materials. The central area included two buildings that may have been used as administrative areas, the team wrote in the journal. In the western part of the central area, a necropolis was discovered. It has large, tall circular tombs that archaeologists call “stepped tower tombs.”

No writing examples have been found so far on the site, lead author of the study William Charlouxarchaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), told Live Science in an email. Researchers found only a few traces of cereals, but based on discoveries at other sites, it is likely that al-Natah residents were growing crops near the site, Charloux said.

The city and its surroundings were surrounded by a 14.5 kilometer long wall, which would have provided defense against raids carried out by nomads, the team wrote in an earlier article published in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports.

Related: Remains of hundreds of 7,000-year-old “standing stone circles” discovered in Saudi Arabia

The city was abandoned between 1500 and 1300 BC, but researchers are not sure why this happened. “It’s a relevant question that I can’t really answer at the moment,” Charloux said, emphasizing that “we have very few clues about the last phase of the occupation.”

Slow urbanization

At the time when the city was inhabited, the towns were flourishing Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Research at al-Natah and other sites indicates that urbanization in the Arabian Peninsula has progressed at a slower pace.

“The northern Arabian settlements were in a transitional phase of urbanization between the third and second millennium (BC),” the researchers said in the statement. They termed this phase “low urbanization”, describing it as a transitional stage between pastoralism, in which nomadic populations follow pastures for livestock, and complex urban settlements.

“As urbanization began in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the 4th millennium
In British Columbia, our study tends to show that social complexity increased late in northwest Arabia,” Charloux said, emphasizing that urbanization only began on the peninsula in the second mid-third millennium BC, when some groups on the Arabian Peninsula adopted a sedentary lifestyle and began to use agriculture on a larger scale. Mesopotamia adopted a sedentary lifestyle in ancient times.

Compared to the large Bronze Age cities of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the colonies of Saudi Arabia tended to be smaller. “These were small towns connected to networks of monumental ramparts surrounding large local oases,” explains Charloux.

Juan Manuel Tebesdirector of the Center for Studies on Ancient Near Eastern History at the Catholic University of Argentina, praised the research.

“The Khaybar Archaeological Project is a most significant study that follows and expands on the findings of excavations and studies carried out in northwestern Saudi Arabia over the past 20 years,” said Tebes, who did not not participated in the study. Experience science in an email.

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He noted that other projects in the region, such as the Saudi-German expedition to the city of Tayma and the Saudi-Austrian expedition to Qurayyah, have also provided valuable information on the archeology of the region. For example, excavations at Tayma have revealed thousands of years of occupation and include remains dating back to when a Babylonian king named Nabonidus (reigned 556–539 BC) lived in the area.

Robert Andrew Cartera senior archeology academic and fieldwork development specialist at Qatar Museums who was not involved in the study, also praised the team’s work. “We have only a sketchy understanding of the Bronze Age and the origins of urban planning in the Hejez region of western Saudi Arabia, and this study contributes greatly to providing primary and to improve our theoretical understanding,” Carter told Live Science. an email.