Dilmun Burial Mounds

Dilmun Burial Mounds

UNESCO World Heritage Site
The burial mounds in 1918
Location	Bahrain
Criteria	Cultural: (iii), (iv)
Reference	1542
Inscription	2019 (43rd Session)
Area	168.45 ha (416.2 acres)
Buffer zone	383.46 ha (947.6 acres)
Coordinates	26°8′59″N 50°30′46″E / 26.14972°N 50.51278°E / 26.14972; 50.51278
Location of Dilmun Burial Mounds in Bahrain

The Dilmun Burial Mounds (Arabic: مدافن دلمون, romanized: Madāfin Dilmūn) are a UNESCO World Heritage Site^[1] comprising necropolis areas on the main island of Bahrain dating back to the Dilmun and the Umm al-Nar culture.

Bahrain has been known since ancient times as an island with a very large number of burials, the (originally) quite a number of square kilometres of mounds were said to be one of the largest cemeteries in the ancient world. The cemeteries are concentrated in the north of the island, on the hard stony areas slightly above the arable farming soils – the south of the island is mainly sandy and desert-like. Recent studies have shown that the estimated/approximately 350,000 ancient grave mounds could have been solely produced by the local population over a number of thousands of years^[vague]. The graves are not all of the same era, or of exactly the same styles, and can vary considerably in size in different areas of the moundfield. Research, under the auspices of the Bahrain National Museum (with the Bahrain Historical and Archaeological Society taking a keen interest), is still continuing, to establish a firm timeline for all these variations and continuations, as well as considering the implications for the society or societies that produced them.