News Archaeology Ancient Arabian cymbals ring up Bronze Age musical connections The copper cymbals suggest regional trade extended beyond pottery, beads and knives A pair of Bronze Age cymbals unearthed in southeastern Arabia, including this one shown during excavations, point to long-distance sharing of ritual and musical traditions around 4,000 years ago. Khaled Douglas By Bruce Bower 8 hours ago Ritually important musical practices resounded across Bronze Age cultures from Arabia to South Asia, a pair of unusual discoveries suggest. Excavations at a roughly 4,000-year-old settlement near the modern village of Dahwa in Oman have uncovered two copper cymbals with far-reaching cultural implications, say archaeologist Khaled Douglas of Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman, and colleagues. Despite looking much like previously unearthed copper cymbals from a Bronze Age civilization in what’s now Pakistan’s Indus Valley, chemical analyses peg the Dahwa cymbals as products of copper sources in Oman, the scientists report April 7 in Antiquity. That suggests residents of the Dahwa settlement used local metals to make regionally distinctive cymbals. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.