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The downfall of the first Omani imamate in 280/885 represented the beginning of clashes between Ibāḍī ideology and the emerging family dynasties in different Omani provinces. The dynastic rulers sought to abolish the imamate system in the country, which led to serious conflict between distinguished political families and Ibāḍī scholars. Perhaps Wajīhid's reign in the fourth/tenth century symbolizes this best. This important family's rule of the country brought about fundamental changes in the areas of politics and commerce, which in turn has occupied the interest of many historians and archaeologists. This paper focuses on the emergence of the Wajīhid, their relations with Omani Ibāḍīs, and the subsequent political and economical changes in Oman. Finally, the paper examines this development in relation to the centre of the caliphate in Baghdad, the Būyids and Qarmatians (Carmathians).

The tower-fortress on the Oman Peninsula have always been a mystery to archeologists. A total of 15 tower-houses have been excavated or surveyed by archeologists in the past decades and yet their purpose inside the settlements is still poorly understood. This thesis analyzes and evaluates the existing theories about the tower-houses and offers an alternative theory by taking into account the locations, sizes and construction techniques of these buildings, using the survey and excavation rapports. The origins of the tower-fortresses can be found as early as the end of the fourth millennium B.C., when the settlement pattern on the Oman Peninsula shifts from the coast to the hinterland. The shift from the coast to the oasis brought a diversification of resources as well as a tighter appropriation of space. Combined with an increase in the copper trade at the beginning of the third millennium, this induced more complexity in the social system. The form of social organization which emerged on the Oman Peninsula due to these factors, was one which was in a liminal stage between a chiefdom and a state society, called a stratified non-state society. The tower-fortress of the Oman Peninsula functioned in such a society as dwellings and locus of regional power of a particular family or moiety. The few towers that have been excavated show many similarities, such as: he positioning of the towers within the settlements, the usage of a platform on which the towers rest, the interior of the platform consisting of two rows of chambers divided by a corridor or well, the ditches surrounding the towers and thus separating them from the rest of the settlement, the fact that all of the towers could only have been accessed by a ramp, etc. All of these similarities indicate specialization and one has to wonder if the possibility exists of a specialized class of tower-builders, travelling from settlement to settlement

There are thousands of burial monuments in the Sultanate of Oman. Despite some gaps in the cairn sequence, they are among the most consistent evidence of the human occupation between the third millennium B.C.E. and the seventh century C.E. For this reason, they have been used as a proxy for researching the ancient communities that inhabited these territories. Unfortunately, the majority of the extant studies have failed to develop comprehensive and systematic analyses of these tombs. The cause of the current situation is the absence of efficient methods to detect and record the burials. Traditional archaeological surveys cannot provide quantitative data for analysis of large areas. At the same time, the visual interpretation of satellite images is extremely time-consuming and cannot address the changes in archaeological data that have happened during the last decade. Recent developments in remote sensing have aimed to replicate the operation of visual interpretation automatically using computer power. This application has the potential to overcome the issues of the current methodologies used for the detection of the burial monuments of Oman. This project aims to develop an efficient method to detect and record the burial monuments of Oman automatically. This approach allows for the limits of visual interpretation to be overcome and thus to fully exploit the quality and quantity of satellite images currently available. Furthermore, this thesis seeks to go beyond the simple detection of the burials, developing a process aimed at automatically digitalising the tombs. This will allow for the extraction of morphological information that, together with the geographical position of the remains, will allow for the burials to be dated. As a consequence, it will be possible to create rich datasets of tombs suitable for use in addressing current archaeological issues. Furthermore, the automation will also greatly assist in monitoring the status of the remains over time. This is necessary due to ongoing developments and looting activities that threaten the preservation of the tombs. The study and preservation of the burial monuments are indeed urgent issues for the archaeology of the Middle East

This thesis focusses on Hafit tombs (3200-2500 BC) in the Wadi Suq and Wadi al-Jizzi regions of the Sultanate of Oman. The main research question proposed is whether existing theories on the Hafit period can explain the distribution pattern present in the study area. In order to answer this question, four sub-questions were created exploring: the general distribution of the tombs, the orientation of the tombs and the correlation between the tombs, visibility and the dry river beds also known as wadis. Each of the sub-questions was answered by applying different tools in ArcGis on the dataset provided by the Wadi al-Jizzi Archaeological Project. Regarding the overall distribution of the tombs, it can be concluded that significant sites with large numbers of Hafit tombs are primarily located around the Wadi Suq, instead of the larger Wadi al-Jizzi and that all the Hafit cemeteries seem to have been located more closely to the area known as the Lower Batinah than towards the mountains. The analysis also revealed that the tombs at Site 43 seem to be clustered like Late Prehistoric Tombs (LTPs), which are of a post-Hafit date. The orientation of the tombs seemed initially clearly focused towards the north-east/south-west and east-west. This coincides with the variation in the azimuth of the sunrise between the months of June and September for the Sohar region. However, a site-to-site comparison displayed a more nuanced picture. The orientation of the tombs at S6 and S58 are evenly distributed, suggesting that they might have been constructed in a later phase of the Hafit period. The analyses in the current thesis also displayed that at the threshold of 1500 meters all tombs in the study area correlate to a wadi system. Interestingly, all of the tombs are clearly visible from the wadi system, despite the different distances to a wadi. This thesis concludes that current theories are unsatisfactory to explain the distribution of Hafit tombs in the study area and that more research is needed in this regard. Not only to improve existing theories or add new ones, but also to determine whether the patterns discussed in this thesis are unique for the study area or are also visible in other parts of the Oman peninsula.