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Publication Date
November 2011
Abstract
Despite 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 industry, 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 belonging 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 Al 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.
Keywords
Paleoanthropology, Archaeology, Optically Stimulated Luminescence, Africa, Sediment, Red Sea, Egypt, Mitochondrial DNA
Document Type
Article
Notes
PloSONE, Vol. 6, no. 11 (2011-11-30).
Identifier
K26-05066
Recommended Citation
Rose, Jeffery I.; Usik, Vitaly I.; and Marks, Anthony E., "The Nubian Complex of Dhofar, Oman: An African Middle Stone Age Industry in Southern Arabia" (2011). KIP Articles. 3749.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/kip_articles/3749
