ABSTRACT
Those who derive pleasure from the observation of ancient peoples and the places in which they lived find a special excitement in the descriptions of the first uncovering of the evidences of long buried and forgotten civilizations by those who originally identified them and who recorded the traces of their lives and deaths. The impact, the immediacy and, above all, the enthusiasm of the excavators’ reports of those often small triumphs which later became the common currency of archaeology more than compensate for their occasional inaccuracy or, sometimes, downright fantasy. Nothing can detract from the excitement which a reading of Carter on Tutankhamun, Woolley on the Royal Graves at Ur, or Evans creating an entire world out of the mounds of Knossos (and, to a substantial degree, his imagination) instantly inspires. Happily, the story of the development of archaeological expedition and research in the Arabian Gulf begins with such a record.
