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The Late Pleistocene of Arabia in Relation to the Levant

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The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia

Part of the book series: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology ((VERT))

Abstract

Our understanding of the Late Pleistocene of Arabia lags far behind that of the Levant, where decades of research have provided a highly refined cultural-chronological framework. Part of the reason for this is a difference in research intensity between the two regions, with the Levant much more intensively studied. More than that, these sites are elusive in Arabia. Very few have been documented and those that have been are small in size, deflated, and contain only lithics. This makes them difficult to categorize temporally and typologically and as a result, the Late Pleistocene remains poorly understood. Alongside issues relating to how to identify the Late Pleistocene in Arabia are those questions regarding potential connections with the Levant and North Africa.

From 25 to 10 ka, hunter-gatherer groups in the Levant, Arabia and Africa underwent compelling social, technological, and economic changes, while also experiencing dramatic fluctuations in climate and ecology. These three regions are connected to each other geographically and environmentally, but much less attention has been placed on potential cultural connections (although see Tosi, 1986; Lahr and Foley, 1994; Petraglia, 2003; Petraglia and Alsharekh, 2003; Rose, 2004a, for example). This chapter attempts to summarize and evaluate our current evidence for Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer occupation of Arabia within the context of its much better known neighbors in the Levant and, to a lesser degree, North and East Africa.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Mike Petraglia for getting me interested in the Arabian Paleolithic and giving me the opportunity to participate in this volume. I would also like to thank Danielle Macdonald for many useful discussions on the Late Pleistocene of Arabia, North Africa, and the Levant. I also thank Mike Harrower for providing me with several hard-to-find publications and for several useful discussions about Arabia. Remy Crassard and Dan Rahimi are thanked for discussions and their comments on the data. I would also like to thank Marta M. Lahr and Rob Foley for introducing me to the North African Epipaleolithic and for several discussions on the Paleolithic. Finally, I would like to thank Kevin Gibbs for reading over and commenting on an earlier version of this chapter.

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  1. Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1QH, UK

    Lisa A. Maher

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  1. Leverhulme Centre for Human, University of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Street 13A, Cambridge, CB2 1QH, United Kingdom

    Michael D. Petraglia

  2. Dept. Anthropology & Geography, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, OX3 0BP, United Kingdom

    Jeffrey I. Rose

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Maher, L.A. (2010). The Late Pleistocene of Arabia in Relation to the Levant. In: Petraglia, M., Rose, J. (eds) The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2719-1_14

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