The environmental context of Paleolithic settlement at Jebel Faya, Emirate Sharjah, UAE

Bretzke, Knut; Armitage, Simon; Parker, Adrian; Walkington, Helen; Uerpmann, Hans‐Peter

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2013.01.028

Cited by 32 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Our analysis suggests such a dispersal may have been possible at this time by traversing through a humid environment, either along the coast, or further inland. However, there is no archaeological evidence for this dispersal, indeed the two archaeological sites dated to MIS 3 both show Middle Palaeolithic lithic traditions that do not conform to any found in East Africa, or even to earlier traditions in other parts of Arabia, suggesting autochthonous developments Bretzke et al, 2013;Delagnes et al, 2013). A key point is that microlithic and crescentic assemblages of the kind described by Mellars (2006) have not yet been found in Arabia.…”

Section: Mismentioning

confidence: 89%

Palaeoclimate in the Saharan and Arabian Deserts during the Middle Palaeolithic and the potential for hominin dispersals

Drake

Breeze

Parker

2013

Quaternary International

107

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Section: Mismentioning

confidence: 89%

Palaeoclimate in the Saharan and Arabian Deserts during the Middle Palaeolithic and the potential for hominin dispersals

Drake

Breeze

Parker

2013

Quaternary International

107

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“…At present all of the stratified and dated Arabian Palaeolithic sites that have been published are associated with palaeohydrological features or at least seasonally wetted local environments indicated by lake-shore, palustrine, fluvial, or precipitation-influenced sediments Rose et al, 2011;Sitzia et al, 2012;Bretzke et al, 2013). The dates for these sites coincide with potential 'humid' phases indicated by wider regional climatic records (Drake et al, 2013;Jennings et al, 2015a).…”

Section: Palaeohydrology and Hominin Dispersals In The Arabian Peninsulamentioning

confidence: 94%

Remote sensing and GIS techniques for reconstructing Arabian palaeohydrology and identifying archaeological sites

Breeze

Drake

Groucutt

et al. 2015

Quaternary International

107

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a b s t r a c tFreshwater availability is critical for human survival, and in the Saharo-Arabian desert belt repeated fluctuations between aridity and humidity over the Quaternary mean the distribution of freshwater was likely a primary control upon routes and opportunities for hominin dispersals. However, our knowledge of the spatio-temporal distribution of palaeohydrological resources within Arabia during MideLate Pleistocene episodes of climatic amelioration remains limited. In this paper we outline a combined method for remotely mapping the location of palaeodrainage and palaeolakes in currently arid regions that were formerly subject to more humid conditions. We demonstrate the potential of this approach by mapping palaeochannels across the whole Arabian Peninsula, and palaeolakes and marshes for select regions covering c. 10% of its surface. Our palaeodrainage mapping is based upon quantitative thresholding of HydroSHEDs data, which applies flow routing to Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data, while our palaeolake mapping uses an innovative method where spectral classification of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery is used to detect palaeolake deposits within endorheic (closed) basins, before modelling maximum lake extents by flooding the basin to the level of the elevation of the highest detected deposit. Field survey in the Nefud desert and the Dawadmi and Shuwaymis regions of Saudi Arabia indicates accuracies of 86% for palaeodrainage mapping, and 96% for identifying former palaeolake basins (73% accuracy of classification of individual deposits). The palaeolake mapping method has also demonstrated potential for identifying surface and stratified archaeological site locations, with 76% of the surveyed palaeolake basins containing archaeological material, including stratified Palaeolithic archaeology. Initial examination of palaeodrainage in relation to archaeological sites indicates a relationship between mapped features and previously recorded Palaeolithic sites. An example of the application of these data for period-specific regional palaeohydrological and archaeological reconstructions is presented for a region of Northern Saudi Arabia covering the southern Nefud desert and adjacent lava fields.

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“…In the entire Arabian Peninsula, such a situation is only echoed at Jebel Faya (assemblages A and B) in the foothills of the Hajjar Mountains (Armitage et al, 2011), which also encompasses a succession of at least two human occupations dated to MIS 3 assigned to a local Middle Paleolithic tradition. The paleoenvironments contemporaneous with the successive phases of occupations at Jebel Faya are discussed by Bretzke et al (2013).…”

Section: Mis 3 Regional Contractionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural and human dynamics in southern Arabia at the end of the Middle Paleolithic

Delagnes

Crassard

Bertrán

et al. 2013

Quaternary International

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a b s t r a c tThe Arabian Peninsula has long been considered as a region devoid of long-term human settlement until the Holocene period, as a result of drastic climatic changes throughout the Pleistocene. It might be expected that the area was deserted during hyper-arid and arid periods, and populated by new migrant groups during humid events, according to a "push and pull" phenomenon. Although this scenario may be perfectly valid for a large part of the Peninsula, a set of recent data points to the persistence of populations in several regions, which may have served as refugia for human groups who developed their own technological traditions. Such a scenario is suggested by:(1) The succession of dense human occupations under arid conditions between ca. 60 and 50 ka, in the Wadi Surdud basin, a small sedimentary basin in the foothills of the Yemeni Western Highlands. This archaeological site complex encompasses several successive human settlements characterized by a Middle Paleolithic tradition which significantly differs from the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age contemporaneous traditions from neighboring regions; (2) The regional diversity of the Middle Paleolithic throughout the Saharo-Arabian arid belt during MIS 3, expressed by an array of local techno-typological facies that likely relate to distant and disconnected source regions where populations contracted when climate worsened.Together with a set of high-resolution archaeological contexts recently discovered in the Arabian Peninsula and dated to MIS 5, these data suggest that the major human expansion waves which occurred in the region during the Upper Pleistocene are correlated with the wet phases of MIS 5, while populations probably contracted into a few refugia areas at the beginning of MIS 3.

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The environmental context of Paleolithic settlement at Jebel Faya, Emirate Sharjah, UAE

Cited by 32 publications

References 54 publications

Palaeoclimate in the Saharan and Arabian Deserts during the Middle Palaeolithic and the potential for hominin dispersals

Palaeoclimate in the Saharan and Arabian Deserts during the Middle Palaeolithic and the potential for hominin dispersals

Remote sensing and GIS techniques for reconstructing Arabian palaeohydrology and identifying archaeological sites

Cultural and human dynamics in southern Arabia at the end of the Middle Paleolithic

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