ABSTRACT
In July, 1954, bronze hoe was discovered 6 km north-west of Dhahran near the Persian/Arabian Gulf in the east of Saudi Arabia. It has an approximately oval shape like the example from Masirah and the reinforcement rib between socket and blade makes it more similar to the older specimen from Masirah than to the Rumeilah one. There is a great variation in size and type among these bronze daggers. But they share some common features, namely they are all cast in one piece, and the hilts are surrounded with a low flange to keep the organic inlays in place. There are several types of armring but only a few come from controlled excavations. Trace element analyses were done on some of the material, mostly on items from the Ibri/Selme hoard. The wide geographical distribution of the instrument over East Arabia indicates close relations between the metal-producing centres during the first half of the 1st millennium BC.
