PLoS ONE (Jan 2011)

The Nubian Complex of Dhofar, Oman: an African middle stone age industry in Southern Arabia.

  • Jeffrey I Rose,
  • Vitaly I Usik,
  • Anthony E Marks,
  • Yamandu H Hilbert,
  • Christopher S Galletti,
  • Ash Parton,
  • Jean Marie Geiling,
  • Viktor Cerný,
  • Mike W Morley,
  • Richard G Roberts

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0028239
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 11
p. e28239

Abstract

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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.