Parting the Red Sea: Late Pleistocene Lithic Variability and Human Dispersals in the Horn of Africa and Arabia

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

The last two decades have witnessed the discovery of numerous archaeological sites in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti/Eritrea/Ethiopia/Somalia) and Arabia ranging in age from OIS 5-3, ~125-29,000 ka. Many are stratified cave, shelter and open-air sites encompassing an impressive array of MSA-LSA/MP-UP flaked and groundstone artifacts, fauna, and more rarely fossilized remains of Homo sapiens. Against a backdrop of extreme fluctuations in paleoenvironments ranging from lofty glaciated peaks to scorching deserts, the sites reveal a high degree of spatio-temporal lithic technological diversity. Some sites on both sides of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden show clear signs of lithic technological connections, while others in Arabia show more affinity with the Eurasian Middle Paleolithic than to any Arabian or African tradition. Sites in the Horn indicate considerable intra-regional variability, including possible western Ethiopian connections with Sudan. Explanations for this lithic diversity are many, but include genetic evidence for hominin dispersals through and across Africa into Arabia, and back again. This symposium brings archaeologists working in the Horn and Arabia together for the first time to discuss how these new data provide important new insights into the Late Pleistocene evolution and global dispersal of Homo sapiens and "modern human behaviour".

Other Keywords
Middle Stone Age • Ethiopia • Lithic Technology • Arabia • Horn of Africa • Lithic • Lithics • Palaeodemography • dispersal • Late Pleistocene

Geographic Keywords
AFRICA • West Asia

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  • Documents (12)
Documents
  • Arabian Late Pleistocene lithic variability and its implications for hominin behavior and demography (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Huw Groucutt.

    The last five years have seen a rapid acceleration in research on Late Pleistocene Arabia. A growing number of Late Pleistocene archaeological sites have now been identified. While Pleistocene hominin fossil remains are currently unknown in Arabia, a fast expanding corpus of faunal remains and paleoenvironmental archives provide important contextual information for hominin occupations. Claims have been made for close similarities between Arabian and broadly contemporary East and Northeast...

  • Crossing Deserts and Seas in the Late Pleistocene: Implications of the Aduma MSA Assemblages, Middle Awash, Ethiopia (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Yellen. Alison Brooks.

    The ca. 3 km2 Aduma region of the Middle Awash region, Ethiopia, incorporates a number of stratified sites within a matrix of sands and silts dating to between 180 ka and ca 80 ka.(Yellen et al 2005). With the exception of one possibly earlier site with late Acheulean bifaces (A-14, Clark et al 2003), all sites yielded diagnostic Middle Stone Age cores and most also contained typical retouched bifacial and unifacial points. In contrast to the earlier assemblages of Gademotta (Sahle et al 2012)...

  • Developing population size estimates for the Saharo-Arabian Late Pleistocene and expectations of their demographic effects (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Scerri. Richard Jennings.

    Similarities between stone tools in northeast Africa and Southwest Asia are considered to reflect either one or more of a number of processes including technological convergence in similar ecological zones, demic dispersal and cultural transfer/cultural diffusion. However, determining the likelihood of these effects is contingent upon accurate estimates of population size – a variable that is rarely discussed explicitly. In this paper, upper and lower bounds for population sizes in the northeast...

  • East African MSA: regionalisation and variability (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Enza Spinapolice.

    The Late Pleistocene is a central period in the story of human origin, being associated with the spread of modern humans within and Out of Africa. While fossils and genetics provide the evolutionary setting for the origin of our species, stone tools are often the only archaeological remain attesting of Early Modern Human behavior, and constitute the bulk of the evidence on hominin behavioural variability. East Africa encompasses ∼3.6 million km² including a large variety of biomes. Sites are...

  • Late Pleistocene Behaviors: Perspectives from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Yonatan Sahle. Yonas Beyene.

    Behavioral contexts across the critical period associated with the evolution and successful dispersal(s) of anatomically modern humans (AMH) within and beyond Africa are inadequately understood. Although the genetic and fossil evidence in hand largely advocates eastern Africa as the most likely source and dispersal route of AMH, the sparseness of archaeological evidence relevant to this period limits behavioral inferences from the region. As a result, evidence for behaviors considered “modern”...

  • Lithic traditions in the Horn of Africa from MIS 3 onwards: views from the Main Ethiopian Rift (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Clément Ménard. François Bon. Lamya Khalidi.

    The Horn of Africa plays an important role in debates on emergence and dispersal of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) and their associated technologies (Middle Stone Age). In comparison, the period that follows (Late Stone Age) has been the subject of much less investigation. We argue that evidence regarding prehistoric groups that remained or came into the region during the latest part of the Pleistocene is critical for understanding the conditions of AMH’s unprecedented expansion and diverse...

  • Parting the Late Pleistocene Red Sea : An Introduction to the Session and Region (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Brandt. Huw Groucutt. Yonatan Sahle.

    The Late Pleistocene dispersal of Homo sapiens and “modern human behaviour” through and out of Africa has become a key issue in human evolutionary studies, largely as a result of intensive archaeological research in southern, and to a lesser extent east and northern Africa. In spite of its remarkably diverse environments, earliest Homo sapiens fossils and strategic location straddling the postulated “Northern” and “Southern” dispersal routes, the Horn of Africa...

  • The Relevance of the Abdur and Asfet Middle Stone Age Sites from the Red Sea Coast of Eritrea (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanuel Beyin.

    The Red Sea basin is emerging as an important region for testing current hypotheses concerning early human dispersal routes out of Africa. However, the immediate peripheries of the basin, especially the African side had seen little prior Paleolithic research, hindering well informed assessment of the temporal and cultural contexts of hominin adaptation along the Red Sea. Owing to its strategic geographic position along the African side of the Red Sea, Eritrea (with ~1300 km of coastline)...

  • The tip of the horn: extractive foraging strategies and stone tool technologies in northwestern Ethiopia during the Middle Stone Age (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kappelman. Lawrence Todd. Neil Tabor. Mulugeta Feseha. Marvin Kay.

    We present data from open-air MSA sites situated along the trunk tributaries of the Blue Nile River in the lowlands of NW Ethiopia that provide information about the behaviors of anatomically modern Homo sapiens in the Horn near the time of its movement out of Africa. The diverse fauna includes mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish from a wide range of body sizes. Stone raw materials include cryptocrystalline quartz and basalt cobbles, both found on the local gravel bars and in exposed basalt...

  • Variability in the Middle Stone Age of the Horn of Africa: a technical tradition of southeastern Ethiopia (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice LEPLONGEON. Erella Hovers. David Pleurdeau.

    The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is traditionally defined by flake, point and elongated blank production associated with retouched tools (e.g. scrapers and retouched points). However, a great cultural variability is observed, whether it is linked with spatial (e.g. Brandt 1986, Clark 1988), or temporal (Early vs Late MSA, e.g. Douze 2011) variability. Here we present results from a comparative analysis of the lithic assemblages from Porc-Epic Cave (e.g. Clark and Williamson 1984, Pleurdeau, 2005) and...

  • What does the Paleolithic record of Southeast Arabia tell us about hominin dispersals out of Africa? (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Knut Bretzke.

    The southern route for human dispersal out of Africa has moved from being a hypothetical idea to being considered a plausible path of human expansion. Fundamental for this development is the intensified field work in Arabia over the past decade. The stratified Paleolithic assemblages from Jebel Faya in the Emirate of Sharjah, U.A.E. play a critical role in this context. Given that Jebel Faya is separated from the African coast of the Red Sea by about 2000 km the question arise what Jebel Faya...

  • The YAS-1 Middle Stone Age site at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Rogers. Sileshi Semaw.

    Tentatively dated to MIS 5/4, the YAS-1 (Ya’alu South 1) site at Gona, Ethiopia is a high-density open-air archaeological site preserving classic Middle Stone Age (MSA) stone tools such as Levallois cores, points, and blades in addition to a variety of fossil fauna, some with bone modifications including cut marks. While most of the archaeological material has been found on the surface over the last ten years, recent excavations have documented both lithics and fauna in situ. Though the...