La pesca prehistórica en el Mar de Arabia: Síntesis de la investigación ictioarqueológica de los trabajos de la Misión Española en los Emiratos Árabes.

Abstract

Thispaper constitutes an overview of archaeological fish studies in thesouthern Arabian Peninsula, in particular those carried out by theteam of the Spanish Archaeological Mission in the United ArabEmirates since 1996. As it presently stands, the state of knowledgein the field is painfully skewed both in terms of assemblages studiedas well as by the retrieval methods that have been systematicallyimplemented on most excavations for fish remains. Still, the studyevidences an enormous diversity of fish taxa, prominent among whichare the fishes of the family Scombridae,in particular tunas (G. Thunnus)and the Kawakawa (Euthynnusaffinis).The site of Dibba al Hisn, in contrast, is the only one featuring asubstantial number of cartilaginous fish, sharks in particular. Thereasons for such abundance are briefly reviewed and it is concludedthat much remains to be known about this fascinating topic of ancientfishing in the region.