Lecture | Human Occupation of Southeastern Arabia

Human Occupation of Southeastern Arabia during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene

Dominik Chlachula (Archeologický ústav AV ČR, Brno)

26 March, 14:10 CET 

The lecture takes place onsite in the Library of the Institute of Archeology in Prague (Letenské 4, Praha 1) and online via Zoom (https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/98408842471 | Passcode: 26032026).

Abstract:

Despite intensive research over the past two decades, evidence for human occupation of Southeast Arabia at the end of the last Ice Age and its continuation into the Early Holocene remains sporadic. Lithic industries from this period, found in stratified contexts in Dhofar, are characterized primarily by blade production from simple, unidirectional, narrow working-surface cores and by the presence of so-called Fasad points. Similar Late/Final Palaeolithic industries have been recorded in the UAE; however, despite earlier attempts to culturally link them with Levantine PPN traditions, they appear to be of autochthonous southern or southeastern Arabian origin. Their emergence at the end of the Last Ice Age, cultural ancestry, development, distribution, and eventual transition into South Arabian Neolithic ways of life remain poorly understood.