A concentration of fish remains found in a single room of a fortified building at Mleiha (United Arab Emirates) is presented here. Part of it was probably the filling of a bag or an organic container that fell from a bench onto the floor of the room. The various species recovered from these contexts, dating to the second to mid-third centuries AD, are briefly described. Particular attention is paid to the skeletal elements by which the fish are represented and to the corresponding lengths of the animals, as these allow the proposition that the fish had been dried on the seashore before being carried to the site inland. The data from building H will be compared to those from previously studied contexts at Mleiha (Gautier & Van Neer ; Mashkour & Van Neer ). In addition the ichthyofauna from ed-Dur (Van Neer & Gautier ), a coastal site that is partially contemporaneous with the contexts from building H, will be considered. |
