Large Flake Acheulean in the Nefud Desert of Northern Arabia

Ceri Shipton (1) , Ash Parton (2) , Paul Breeze (3) , Richard P. Jennings (2) , Huw S. Groucutt (2) , Tom S. White (2) , Nicholas Drake (3) , Rémy Crassard (4) , Abdullah Alsharekh (5) , Michael D. Petraglia (2)

1 UQ [All campuses : Brisbane, Dutton Park Gatton, Herston, St Lucia and other locations] - The University of Queensland
2 School of Archaeology
3 King‘s College London
4 Archéorient - ARCHEORIENT - Environnements et sociétés de l'Orient ancien
5 Department of archaeology

Between the Levant and the Indian sub-continent only a few Acheulean sites have been documented, hampering models of hominin dispersals. Here we describe the first Acheulean sites to be discovered in the Nefud Desert of northern Arabia. The four sites occur in a variety of settings including adjacent to an alluvial fan drainage system, at a knappable stone source, and on the margins of endorheic basins. We discuss the implications of the sites for hominin landscape use, in particular the preferential transport and curation of bifaces to fresh water sources. The bifaces correspond to the Large Flake middle Acheulean in the Levantine sequence. The sites occupy a gap in the distribution of the Acheulean across the Saharo-Arabian arid belt, and as such have implications for dispersal routes between Africa and Asia.

Domaines: Archéologie et Préhistoire

Ceri Shipton, Ash Parton, Paul Breeze, Richard P. Jennings, Huw S. Groucutt, et al.. Large Flake Acheulean in the Nefud Desert of Northern Arabia. Paleoanthropology, 2014, 2014, pp.446-462. ⟨10.4207/PA.2014.ART85⟩. ⟨hal-01828913⟩