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January 2012 - September 2022
October 2017 - December 2020
August 2009 - February 2012
Publications
Publications (46)
Due to the scarcity of stratified and well-dated archaeological horizons, diachronic as well as spatial patterns of Pleistocene lithic traditions are not very well understood in Arabia. To contribute to this topic, we present new archaeological, sedimentological and chronological data from archaeological horizon II (AH II), the stratigraphically yo...
Archaeological records from the United Arab Emirates feature currently gaps regarding human occupation during the late Middle Pleistocene (c. 250-130 ka) and the terminal Late Pleistocene (ca. 60-12 ka). In this paper we will provide an overview of recent field work of the Sharjah Archaeology Authority and University of Tübingen joint project on th...
Research suggests that human occupation of Arabia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (ca 770–12 ka) is largely determined by climate change and restricted to relatively short windows of opportunity during periods of increased precipitation. Questions arise about how human behavioural evolution has factored into the Palaeolithic settlement of Ar...
Quaternary environments on the Arabian Peninsula shifted between pronounced arid conditions and phases of increased rainfall, which had a profound impact on Earth surface processes. However, while aeolian sediment dynamics are reasonably well understood, there is a lack of knowledge with regard to variability in the fluvial systems. Presented here...
For the last 10 years, we have been carefully excavating rich, well-stratified Middle Stone Age (MSA) horizons from Sibhudu in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. This work has provided a great abundance of numerous classes of cultural material from well-controlled contexts dating to between > 90 and 36 ka that is relevant for documenting the Late Pleisto...
Paleolithic research on the Arabian Peninsula is still in its early stage. During the last decade, however, an increasing number of field projects were conducted and added significant data to the record. This development in addition to substantial paleoenvironmental research on Pleistocene climate and habitat changes creates a promising setting for...
Changing climatic conditions are thought to be a major control of human presence in Arabia during the Paleolithic. Whilst the Pleistocene archaeological record shows that periods of increased monsoon rainfall attracted human occupation and led to increased population densities, the impact of arid conditions on human populations in Arabia remains la...
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 ca. 125,000 and 10,000 years ago. The large chronological gaps observed between settlement phases are thought to...
Papers from the Special Session "Stone Tools of Prehistoric Arabia" of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held in July 2019 in Leiden.
Supplement to volume 50 (2020) of the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies.
The PalaeoEnvironments and ARchaeological Landscapes (PEARL) research project is a joint German–British project with the principal objective of developing a framework of past human occupation and landscape change in south‐eastern Arabia. Fieldwork during 2018 and 2019 involved the systematic survey and excavation of sites in the Rustaq and Ibri reg...
Systematic prospection and excavations in the Rustaq region of northern Oman, approximately 45 km from the coast in the foothills of the Western Hajar Mountains, have revealed an unexpectedly dense record of Neolithic sites. Besides surface scatters of lithic artefacts, excavation at the site of Hayy al-Sarh recovered two stratified archaeological...
There is abundant evidence for an Acheulean occupation from many parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The archaeological record, however, features a significant gap in SE Arabia. Here we report new evidence for an Acheulean occupation from site Suhailah 1 (SHL 1) located in the interior of the Emirate of Sharjah, UAE. We present the lithic assemblage re...
Southwestern Asia plays an essential part in all models that have been developed to explain how and when modern humans colonized Eurasia. Given the rich record of Southwestern Asia and the long history of research, it is not surprising that the region provides an enormous wealth of information on the lifeways and population dynamics of prehistoric...
Silcrete heat treatment in the South African Middle Stone Age has been understood as a proxy for several key concepts in the evolution of early anatomically modern humans, although relatively little is yet known about the techniques and procedures used for it. Tempering-residue on heat-treated artefacts is one of the few known proxies for such a he...
The Upper Palaeolithic (UP) record of the Zagros Mountains is of critical importance for our understanding of the dispersal of modern humans into Southwest Asia. Most researchers interpret the record as reflecting the existence of two developmentally related cultural groups, the Baradostian of the early UP and the Zarzian of the late UP or Epipalae...
This paper presents an overview of three Paleolithic sites excavated in southwestern Syria between 1999 and 2007. The sites were discovered as part of a large-scale, regional survey conducted in Damascus Province by a multidisciplinary research team from the University of Tübingen. We focus on the Epipaleolithic shell assemblages from Baaz Rockshel...
The Tübingen-Damaskus Ausgrabungs-und Survey Projekt (TDASP) conducted Paleolithic field work in the Damascus Province of western Syria between 1999 and 2010. The TDASP team excavated four stratified sites dating to the Middle Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic. Here we report on Wadi Mushkuna Rockshelter, a well stratified Middle Pa...
The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa represents a period during which anatomically modern humans adopted a series of diverse cultural innovations. Researchers generally attribute these behavioral changes to environmental, neurological, or demographic causes, but none of these alone offers a satisfactory explanation. Even as patterns at sit...
We report here on layers and finds from Faya Shelter, an archaeological sequence excavated in the south-western part of site FAY-NE1 at Jebel Faya in the Central Region of Sharjah Emirate. Work between 2009 and 2013 exposed six archaeological horizons (AHs) and enabled a stratigraphic connection of AHs IV-VI from Faya Shelter with assemblages A, B,...
Key to the understanding of Pleistocene human dispersals and settlement dynamics is knowledge about the distribution of human habitats in space and time. To add information about the characteristics of inhabited environments along the South Arabian dispersal route, this paper presents paleo-environmental data from deposits excavated at Jebel Faya (...
This paper reports on the ongoing collaborative research of the University of Tübingen and the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums of Syria in the region of Ma’aloula and Yabroud in the Damascus Province. This region, which includes an area of roughly 500 km2, lies on the eastern side of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains with elevations ranging...
Zusammenfassung: Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit den Aussagemöglichkeiten von Ober- flächenfunden für siedlungsarchäologische Fragestellungen. Er verfolgt dabei einen so genannten off-site Ansatz, der nicht Fundplätze, sondern Einzelartefakte in den Mittelpunkt der Auswertung stellt. Als fundamentale Grundannahme dient dabei die Aussag...
The reconstruction of human behavior is of central interest in archaeological research. Studies concerning this question operate on different levels of spatial resolution. Either patterns on the site level are analyzed or focus is placed on a landscape level. While for the first case a comprehensive methodology exists, there is a lack of specific m...
One major research question in contemporary paleoanthropology is whether human behavior and anatomy evolved together or independently from each other. Closely related to this question is whether or not cultural modernity evolved suddenly or gradually. To address these questions we consider the lithic projectiles from Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Late...
