In the earliest written records of the Gulf, a land called Dilmun appears again and again. Sumerian tablets from the third millennium BC mention it as a trading partner, a source of copper and a place where certain gods were said to live. Scholars long argued over where it was, until excavations in Bahrain in the 1950s turned up a walled port city, temples and tens of thousands of graves. The match was convincing enough that Dilmun is now generally identified with Bahrain and the nearby coast of eastern Arabia.
The burial mounds are the most visible part of that civilisation. They were built between about 2200 and 1750 BC, and they range from small stone-ringed graves to the great royal mounds with their two-storey chambers. The bodies were buried in a crouched position with pottery, beads and sometimes weapons, and there is evidence of offerings made at the tombs for generations. The sheer number suggests that Bahrain was a place of special significance, and a visit makes you think about the connection between island, sea and afterlife in the minds of the people who lived here.
A short ride from the mounds takes you to Qal'at al-Bahrain, the fort and archaeological site on the north coast, which holds layers of occupation from the Dilmun period to the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. It was listed as a World Heritage Site in 2005, and it is a better place than most to understand how the old harbour town worked. The Barbar temple, west of Manama, is another Dilmun site, with an elliptical platform and a sacred spring.
Practically, Bahrain is easy and compact. Roads are good, fuel is cheap and signs are in English as well as Arabic, so you can cover the island in a day. Madinat Hamad, four kilometres from this site, is the nearest town of size.
Plan visits for the cooler months, and keep your timing flexible. In summer, the mounds are best seen first thing in the morning, before the heat sets in.