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
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)
- Documents (12)
- Arabian Late Pleistocene lithic variability and its implications for hominin behavior and demography (2016)
- Crossing Deserts and Seas in the Late Pleistocene: Implications of the Aduma MSA Assemblages, Middle Awash, Ethiopia (2016)
- Developing population size estimates for the Saharo-Arabian Late Pleistocene and expectations of their demographic effects (2016)
- East African MSA: regionalisation and variability (2016)
- Late Pleistocene Behaviors: Perspectives from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia (2016)
- Lithic traditions in the Horn of Africa from MIS 3 onwards: views from the Main Ethiopian Rift (2016)
- Parting the Late Pleistocene Red Sea : An Introduction to the Session and Region (2016)
- The Relevance of the Abdur and Asfet Middle Stone Age Sites from the Red Sea Coast of Eritrea (2016)
- The tip of the horn: extractive foraging strategies and stone tool technologies in northwestern Ethiopia during the Middle Stone Age (2016)
- Variability in the Middle Stone Age of the Horn of Africa: a technical tradition of southeastern Ethiopia (2016)
- What does the Paleolithic record of Southeast Arabia tell us about hominin dispersals out of Africa? (2016)
- The YAS-1 Middle Stone Age site at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia (2016)