@

        The Shell Birdwatching Guide to the United Arab Emirates
        Colin Richardson & Simon Aspinall. Hobby Publications, Dubai and Liverpool (Dh 60). 96 pp. pbk.

        Two of the UAE’s top birdwatchers, both members of the Emirates Bird Records Committee, have joined together to produce this indispensible pocket-sized handbook for anyone interested in the country’s birds. It combines an invaluable list of over 50 good birdwatching sites, complete with instructions on how to get to them, and an idea of what birders might expect to see, and at what time of year. Couple this with an updated checklist of the country’s birds, a ‘tick list’ for handy reference and a selection of high quality colour pictures of the variety of habitat to be found around the country, and this guide is a publication that anyone interested in the UAE’s birds cannot afford to be without, whether they are resident or simply visitors.

        One can, of course, nit-pick a little. The check-list, updated to July 1998, has a few curious omissions (perhaps awaiting the original observer’s documentation ?), while there is a lack of clarity with some of the records included in Appendix One, (Species with Uncertain Status). Taxonomic decisions in the main list, on, for example, the ëYellow-legged Gull’ complex or the equally confusing but less well-studied Catharacta skuas, could also be open to question.
        The introductory section on the UAE is somewhat skewed in favour of Dubai, which seems a little unfair to the UAE. Overall, though, it is a model of its kind: utterly essential. Shell Markets Middle East deserve thanks for having made it see the light of day.



        @

        Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey: Season One
        G.R.D. King. Trident Press, London. 96 pp. hbk. (Dh 120 from ADIAS, P.O.Box 45553, Abu Dhabi). ISBN:1900724-14-6

        Established in 1992, the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey has made a major contribution to the discovery of the country’s archaeological heritage. This book reports the results of the first preliminary season of survey on the islands of Merawah, Dalma and Sir Bani Yas, on all of which subsequent work has taken place.

        ADIAS Director Dr. Geoffrey King provides a useful gazetteer of sites found, and, something of great interest to the general reader, also collects together for the first time all available historical information relating to these islands.
        Despite the explosion in archaeological activity in the Emirates over the past fifteen years, there have been few publications available outside academic journals to make the discoveries available to the wider public, and this book represents a useful contribution to that process.

        ADIAS has moved on substantially since the survey season recorded in this book, but anyone interested in the country’s history and heritage will find it fascinating. The book is published with the support of the Ministry of Information and Culture, which, it should be said, has an unusually enlightened approach to the publication of serious research into the heritage and natural history of the country. Long may it last!



        @

        Waves of Time: The Marine Heritage of the United Arab Emirates
        Ed. Peter Hellyer. Trident Press, London. ISBN 1-900724-20-0. 190 pp hbk (Dh125).

        Subtitled ‘The Marine Heritage of the United Arab Emirates’, this fascinating volume, produced with the support of the Ministry of Information and Culture, fills a glaring hole in the existing literature about this ostensibly maritime nation. The jacket cover describes the book as an exploration of the ongoing relationship between the UAE’s citizens and the sea, an objective which it achieves admirably well.

        Eight chapters have been contributed by acknowledged local experts, these carefully edited into an authoritative monograph. As a historical and archaeological narrative it contains much information not readily available, and certainly not in any previous single volume. Man’s existence and his changing patterns of resource use, back to his very earliest appearance in the land now known as the United Arab Emirates, have been painstakingly traced and concisely documented.

        The style purposely avoids scientific jargon throughout, and only the sheer mass of information might confound the reader. A book that can be enjoyed by reading cover to cover, it is also a invaluable reference work. Colour photographs adorn at least every other page, with maps, figures and archive black and white photographs also used liberally, as the text itself dictates.

        The accomplished life of the shrewd Ras Al Khaimah born navigator, Ahmed Ibn Majid; boat-building and seamanship; the history of pearling; the influence of Islam; the evolution of trading relations, including, remarkably, with far-distant China in the early centuries AD; the charting of the coast by colonial powers and their swapping fortunes and the dugong once butchered for dinner are just some of the topics making this publication a literary Aladdin’s Cave (very usefully indexed). For once we have an academic account that can be read, easily understood and enjoyed by anyone, even confirmed non-historians.




        @

        Publications Received

        Al Ain: Oasis City. Peter Hellyer and Rosalind Buckton. Motivate Publishing, Dubai. (Arabian Heritage series) ISBN 1-873544-53-7. 92 pp.

        Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, (editor-in-chief: Daniel T. Potts). Munksgaard, Copenhagen. Vol. 9.1 ISSN 0905-796. 140 pp. (UAE-related papers on: The chronology and regional contexts of late prehistoric incised arrowheads in southeastern Arabia, [P. Magee], A study of the petroglyphs from Wadi al-Hayl, Fujairah, [M.C. Ziolkowski], New evidence of the initial appearance of iron in southeastern Arabia, [P. Magee], Des feux sacrificiels pour la divinite solaire a ed-Dur, [E. Haerinck, L. Vrydaghes & H. Doutrelepont].

        Falco, Newsletter of the Middle East Falcon Research Group. Issue No. 12. 18 pp. Fax: 00-441-267-233684. e-mail: [email protected]. Run from the UK-based Falcon Facility of the National Avian Research Centre, part of Abu Dhabi’s Environmental Research & Wildlife Development Agency. Papers include The NARC Falcon Programme 1998 [Helen Macdonald] and the ERWDA/NARC research study satellite tagging sakers in the Russian Altai [Chris Eastham]. Membership of MEFRG is open to anyone interested in falconry and falcon conservation in the Middle East or elsewhere.