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In Dhofar, the southern Governorate of the Sultanate of Oman, the deep canyons cutting the Nejd plateau once flowed with perennial rivers, feeding wetland environments, forests, and grasslands across the now desiccated interior. The first peoples of Oman flourished along these waterways, drawn to the freshwater springs and abundant game, as well as the myriad chert outcrops with which to fashion their hunting implements and other tools. The landscapes of the Nejd Plateau are a natural museum of human prehistory, covered in carpets of chipped stone debris. The archaeological evidence presented in this work encompasses the cultural remains of over a million years of successive human occupations, from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Late Palaeolithic. Once considered an evolutionary backwater or merely a migratory way station, the archaeology of Dhofar requires a fundamental reconsideration of the role of Southern Arabia in the origin and dispersal of our species
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This paper presents new evidence of Late/Final Palaeolithic occupation in central Oman... [cite: 4]
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Despit e the numerous studies proposing early human population expansions from Africa into Arabia during the Late Pleistocene, no archaeological sites have yet been discovered in Arabia that resemble a specific African industly. which would indicate demographic exchange across the Red Sea. Here we report the discovery of a buried site and more than 100 new surface scatters in the Dhofar region of Oman belo ng ing to a regionally-specific African lithic industry- the late Nubian Complex - known previously only from the northeast and Horn of Africa during Marine Isotope Stage 5, - 128,000 to 74,000 years ago. Two optically stimulated luminescence age estimates from the open-air site of Aybut AI Auwal in Oman place the Arabian Nubian Complex at - 106,000 years ago, providing archaeological evidence for the presence of a distinct northeast African Middle Stone Age technocomplex in southern Arabia sometime in the first half of Marine Isotope Stage 5.
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This paper presents the newly identified Middle Palaeolithic site of Wadi Baw 4, in the Al Wusta Governate, close to Duqm. Middle Palaeolithic sites are very rare, especially in central Oman, where no sites had been identified prior to this, making this an important site not only for Oman, but the broader Arabian Peninsula. The site is a large (100m2) and relatively dense (>30 artefacts/m2) lithic scatter located on a slightly elevated limestone ridge with outcropping chert nodules at its base and flanks. The lithic assemblages produced from these chert nodules exhibit technological variability and weathering heterogeneity, indicating a likely palimpsest of Pleistocene (Middle Palaeolithic) and later Holocene occupation phases that targeted this raw material. By extending the Middle Palaeolithic record of hominin activity into the Huqf area of south-eastern Arabia with the first evidence of Levallois lithic technology, Wadi Baw 4 helps to diversify the picture of Arabian prehistory and promises to make an important contribution to wider debates surrounding the early peopling of the Arabian Peninsula. Work is in progress to establish a robust chronostratigraphic framework for the site through a multi-technique dating approach. In the meantime, this paper will present some preliminary results from the analysis of the Middle Palaeolithic lithic artefacts from the site and briefly consider where they might fit within the wider context of the Arabian Middle Palaeolithic.
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Topic
- Archéologie -- Oman (1)
- Dhofar (1)
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- Book (1)
- Journal Article (1)
- Presentation (2)