Dūmat al-Jandal, Ancient Adummatu. An Appraisal of 12 Years of Archaeological Activities in a North Arabian Oasis: from the Prehistory to the Assyrian Period

Since 2009 the Italian Archaeological Mission in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (MAIRAS) of the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (UNO) has been conducting archaeological re- search in Dūmat al-Jandal, in the al-Jawf region of northern Saudi Arabia. Several topics are pursued, stretching from the study of the al-Jawf paleo-landscape and the oasis formative process up to the excavation of the historical core of this site known as Adummatu in the Neo-Assyrian period, Dumah in the Nabataean era, Dumata in the Roman Provincia Arabia period and, finally, Dūmat al-Jandal in the Late Antique – Early Islamic centuries. This paper intends to introduce the main prehistoric and historical issues, with a particular focus devoted to the remote sensing activities to which the 2020 autumn season was devoted and the definition of the Assyrian ware corpus in light of the 2019 excavation of the so-called “al-Sunamiyat necropolis” in Dūmat al-Jandal, which actually suggests that the supposed ancient ‘arab urban area of the oasis has been larger than generally maintained.