On the Diversity of the Palaeolithic Record and Patterns of Pleistocene Palaeoenvironmental Conditions in Southeast Arabia

The Late Pleistocene occupation of Southeast Arabia is well documented in the sequence recorded at Jebel Faya, Emirate of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). Here the archaeological record suggests pulses of occupation in the region between ~125,000 and 10,000 years ago. The large chronological gaps observed between settlement phases are thought to indicate long periods of severe climatic conditions during the Late Pleistocene preventing human occupation over long periods of time. Recent palaeoenvironmental research, however, revealed the occurrence of brief periods with increased potential for human settlement in the region. To test the pulsed occupation scenario developed from the Jebel Faya stratified sequence, we conducted systematic surveys in Suhailah, a region about 50 km north of Jebel Faya. Our results show that besides abundant Holocene material, a number of typo-technologically distinct assemblages of Palaeolithic age can be found. Comparisons with the archaeological record from Jebel Faya, led us to conclude that the Suhailah record provides evidence for Palaeolithic occupation phases not recorded in the stratified Faya sequence. We argue that an increased diversity in the archaeological record and potentially more frequent occupations of the central region in Sharjah during the Late Pleistocene, implies that the recently identified brief periods of increased precipitation could have played an important role for human occupation.