The Nubian Complex of Dhofar, Oman: An African Middle Stone Age Industry in Southern Arabia
2011/11/30 by Jeffrey I. Rose, Vitaly I. Usik, Anthony E. Marks +7 · 233 citations
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Ancient history #Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Demography #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies #Geography #Geology #History #Later Stone Age #Middle East #Middle Stone Age #Pleistocene #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Population
paper · pdf · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028239
published in PLoS ONE 6(11), e28239 (Public Library of Science)
openalex publication_date 2011/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Abstract
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.
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