The Nexus of Cult and Pastoralism in Neolithic Northwest Arabia: Contextualising the Mustatil Phenomenon

At present more than 1600 mustatil have been recorded across Arabia. These monumental ritual structures have been interpreted as markers of territoriality and a key component in constructing and consolidating kinship ties and communal social identities in the Late Neolithic. Perhaps most strikingly, these structures are marked by a homogeneity of architectural form, over a vast geographic area, some 350,000 km². In AlUla County, ten mustatil have been excavated, including seven by the AAKSA and PAKEP projects. These excavations have revealed chronologically contemporaneous ritual deposits of faunal remains, specifically the horns and upper cranial elements of domesticated sheep, goat, and cattle, as well as wild taxa, such as gazelle and ibex. Despite the overall similarity of architectural form across these examples, the faunal composition of these deposits varies, with some structures marked by higher proportions of wild taxa, whilst others are predominantly composed of cattle and/or caprines. In this paper, we present the data from each of the excavated mustatils and explore the possibility that these assemblages represent the pastoral economies of the group(s) who constructed the mustatil, shedding new light on the various lifeways and herding practices of the 6^th and 5^th millennia BC. In addition, comparison with contemporary domestic occupation suggests that the appearance of the mustatil marks the emergence of a sacral architectural form in northwest Arabia during the Neolithic, with a clear architectural distinction maintained between the sacred and profane.