Five Thousand Years of Shell Exploitation at Bandar Jissah, Sultanate of Oman

Bandar Jissah is a sheltered cove on the eastern side of the Muscat Capital Area of the Sultanate of Oman that was occupied from at least the Neolithic period(5th-4th millennia BC) through the Late Islamic era. Following investigations by the Uerpmanns and Paul Yule in the 1980s-90s and limited excavations by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture in the 2000s, salvage excavations were conducted by the authors at Bandar Jissah in 2009 under the direction of Prof. Gregory Possehl. These test excavations at the Neolithic shell middens and the Iron Age settlement uncovered a substantial quantity and variety of seashells that suggest the exploitation of marine resources for both subsistence and craft working. In this paper, presented in honor of a scholar who began his career studying seashell crafting, a diachronic view of sea shell extraction and use is detailed from one small area of the Oman Peninsula.