The 56th Seminar for Arabian Studies will be co-hosted by Moesgaard Museum and Aarhus University, Denmark, 4th-6th August 2023. These were the two institutions behind the pioneering archaeological expeditions to the Arabian Gulf (est. 1953), originally directed by P.V. Glob and T. G. Bibby. Various commemorative events and small exhibits are planned to mark the 70^th jubilee of the beginning of the archaeological expeditions. A special session related to the scientific legacy of the Aarhus Expedition is also being planned.

If you wish to offer a paper, please send an abstract to seminar.arab@theiasa.com on or before the 31 January 2023 for consideration by the Steering Committee. Do not send abstracts to any other e-mail address. Papers submitted should address a research approach that engages with answering unknown questions or challenge existing assumptions as opposed to papers that strictly report on empirical observations.

Abstracts should include what the proposed paper intends to cover, an outline of the approach it will take and an indication of the significance of the topic. Abstracts can include up to three relevant bibliographical references. All abstracts must also include 1) the title of the proposed paper; 2) name(s) and affiliation(s) of the contributor(s); 3) five keywords. Abstracts are limited to 200 words maximum (not including bibliographic references) and abstracts that are significantly over the word limit may rejected. Please submit your abstracts as Word documents only.

Presentations are limited to 20 minutes, with an additional 5 minutes for discussion. They must be delivered in English and submissions for publication in PSAS must be made in English. Due to programme time constraints, and the ever-increasing number of abstracts received, there is no guarantee that all papers will be accepted. The Steering Committee will select those abstracts that are most scholarly, with a focused statement of thesis or importance, clear aims and methodology, well-organised research data, specified sources, and coherent conclusions. As in previous years, the Committee will normally only accept one abstract from any given project. Only those papers that are actually presented at the Seminar will be considered for publication in the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, and they will be subject to editorial and peer review.

A brief history of the Seminar for Arabian Studies

The Seminar began as an informal study group set up in 1968 at the time of the first official British archaeological survey in Saudi Arabia, led by Peter Parr of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. The purpose of the group was to promote archaeological research in the Arabian Peninsula and, after an initial meeting, the group formed itself into the Arabia Society, with John Dayton as Honorary Secretary.

After two relatively small conferences in 1969 and another two in 1970, the Seminar for Arabian Studies, as it had now become, settled into a pattern of annual conferences, of ever increasing size, in 1971, 1972, and 1973. From 1974 onwards, the present pattern had been established of a three-day conference in July, with the publication of its Proceedings in time for the conference of the following year. For many years, the conference circulated between London, Oxford, and Cambridge with occasional visits to Durham, Edinburgh and Manchester. From 2002 to 2018 it was hosted in London by the British Museum. In 2019 the Seminar took place in Leiden, Netherlands and in 2020 will be held in Cordoba, Spain.

Summaries of some of the papers presented at the first Seminar and a list of those given at the second (in January and June 1969 respectively) were published in the Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London 8-9, 1968-1969: 243-258. These were later republished, together with papers from the third to sixth Seminars (the 3rd Seminar held in January 1970, the 4th in June 1970, the 5th in September 1971, and the 6th in September 1972) in a cumulative volume together with the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies vol. 1-3 in 1973. This was in addition to the separate volumes of PSAS 1 (1971), 2 (1972) and 3 (1973).

From volume 1 (1971), containing the papers from the fourth Seminar held in Cambridge in June 1970, the Proceedings have been published each year and 2020 saw volume 50, containing the papers from the 53rd Seminar held in the University of Leiden in 2019.

Special Sessions

As well as the wide range of subjects covered in its main sessions, the Seminar also offers the opportunity for more detailed discussion of a particular area of research by invited speakers in a Special Session, lasting either half a day or a full day. The papers read at a Special Session will be considered for publication either in the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies (PSAS) or in a separate volume as a Supplement to PSAS.

Past Special Sessions:

2017: Languages, scripts and their uses in ancient North Arabia (published in a Supplement to PSAS 48, 2018).
2016: Textiles and personal adornment in the Arabian Peninsula (published in PSAS 47, 2017).
2013: Languages of Southern Arabia (published in a Supplement to PSAS 44, 2014).
2012: Museums in Arabia (not published).
2011: The Nabataeans in Focus: Current archaeological research at Petra (published in a Supplement to PSAS 42, 2012).
2009: The development of Arabic as a written language (published in a Supplement to PSAS 40, 2010).
2007: Defining the Palaeolithic of Arabia (a summary of the discussion was published in PSAS 38, 2008 and it was developed in M D Petraglia and J I Rose (eds), The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia, 2010)