Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The pottery and glass fragments examined here were collected in 1941 from three sites on the Aden littoral. They were picked up on the surface at (1) Kawd am-Saila, the “Dune of the Flood-Course”, a large isolated mound situated on the main Aden-Lahej-Yemen road, (2) Al-Ḥabīl, lying north-west of Lahej, just a little off the main Yemen route, and (3) Zingibar. The lastnamed site lies within the Abyan oasis on the coastal plain, some 35 miles north-east of Aden. For an area of some miles there, extending almost to the foothills, the surface is covered with potsherds of all kinds and periods, both glazed and unglazed. In places the ground is quite red with fragments of unglazed earthenware. Abyan is a site of great antiquity well known to Arab authors, and in pre-Islamic inscriptions, but the other two places have not yet been identified.