Lizq is an archaeological site in Ash Sharqiyah, Oman. Located on a mountain lying in a plain, south-east of the south-eastern edge of the Lizq palm garden, the fort dates to the Lizq-Rumaylah/Early Iron Age.
Description The site was discovered in 1979 during the archaeological exploration of Gerd Weisgerber of the German Mining Museum (Deutsches Bergbau-Museum) in Bochum. Shaikh Hamdan al-Harthy of Samad led Weisgerber to the site.Stephan Kroll, Die Bergfestung Lizq-1, in: Gerd Weisgerber et al., Mehr als Kupfer in Oman, Der Anschnitt 33, 1981, 226-231.. In 1981 a single season long German archaeological team mapped and conducted minimal rescue excavation. They did an ad hoc restoration of the stairs which lead up the northern face of the mountain. Since there are several sites near Lizq town, the fort is disambiguated as 'L1'.
The Lizq fort owes its existence to the reliable occurrence of water at a natural causeway at the southern side of the central mountains. The main fort on the western mountain peak is some wide and has a surface of more than in surface area. This makes it the largest Early Iron Age fort in central Oman. The location of the Iron Age village associated with the fort remains unknown. No falaj was discovered.Paul Yule, Cross-roads – Early and Late Iron Age South-eastern Arabia, Abhandlungen Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, vol. 30, Wiesbaden 2014, 31-34 Fig. 12.
Important is Kroll's comparison of the pottery with that of Iron Age Iran.
See also Archaeology of Oman
Further reading
References
External links heidICON - Die Heidelberger Objekt- und Multimediadatenbank