The wasm: writing on stone and skin
Before identity papers, the wasm said whose camels these were and where their owner came from.
Oral History
Documenting living memory and vernacular narrative before modernity folds them away.
The AlUla inscriptions and the Lihyanites: documenting ancient belief and symbol
An anthropological analysis of rock texts and doctrinal symbols in the north-west of the Kingdom.
Kinship terms: why do we have a name for every relative?
A paternal uncle is not a maternal uncle, and their sons are not the same either. The precision is no linguistic luxury.
Testimony: the last waterskin maker in the neighbourhood
A craft that was in every house, and now one man still knows it. A recorded testimony about a trade on its way to disappearing.
The AlUla inscriptions: a human archive in the rock of the Hijaz
The rocks of AlUla hold a history alive with feeling, names and fear — human texts that outlast time and tell what the official archive left out.
How do we document an oral account? A short practical guide
Before you start the recorder: what to ask, how to listen, and what to write down after you switch it off.
Pearl diving: a trade that vanished and a memory that stayed
Before oil, pearls were the entire economy of the eastern coast. What remains of a trade that ended within a single generation?
Social change in Saudi cities: field notes
Between 2015 and 2025 Saudi cities went through rapid social change that deserves careful anthropological observation — neither blind celebration nor despairing critique.
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