Rémy Crassard

French National Centre for Scientific Research | CNRS · Archéorient (UMR 5133), Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée

The Arabian Peninsula has long been considered as a region devoid of long-term human settlement untilthe Holocene period, as a result of drastic climatic changes throughout the Pleistocene. It might beexpected that the area was deserted during hyper-arid and arid periods, and populated by new migrantgroups during humid events, according to a “ push...

Pre-Pottery Neolithic assemblages are best known from the fertile areas of the Mediterranean Levant. The archaeological site of Jebel Qattar 101 (JQ-101), at Jubbah in the southern part of the Nefud Desert of northern Saudi Arabia, contains a large collection of stone tools, adjacent to an Early Holocene palaeolake. The stone tool assemblage contai...

This paper argues that the wide geographical distribution of desert kites, which are huge archaeological structures of stone visible from satellite images, must be more broadly acknowledged as a momentous factor in the study of their variability and function. This is important so that researchers can more accurately understand and interpret their i...

Data on how Stone Age communities conceived domestic and utilitarian structures are limited to a few examples of schematic and non-accurate representations of various-sized built spaces. Here, we report the exceptional discovery of the up-to-now oldest realistic plans that have been engraved on stones. These engravings from Jordan and Saudi Arabia...

For almost a century there has been debate on the functional interpretation of desert kites. These archaeological structures have been interpreted as constructions for animal hunting or domestication purposes, sometimes for both, but with little conclusive evidence. Here, we present new evidence from a large-scale research programme. This unprecede...

The characterisation of abiotic resources has constituted a major topic in Prehistoric Archaeology since the 50s of the previous Century. Inferring human mobility, especially if the distance is high, still constitutes the main output of lithic raw material research. Furthermore, in the last decades, the characterisation of abiotic resources is dive...

Recent exploration of the Khaybar oasis by the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project (AFALULA-RCU-CNRS) has led to the discovery of an exceptional Bronze Age fortified site called al-Natah. For the first time in Northwestern Arabia, the characteristics of a third/second-millennium-BCE settlement can be assessed over a large area. Preliminary...

In Oman, many coastal sites dated to the Neolithic have yielded material culture related to ornament manufacture. These sites are the remnants of fishermen occupations, developing an economy mainly based on maritime and mangrove resources. The Omani islands of Maṣīrah and Al‐Ḥallāniyah are both situated in the Arabian Sea. Today, Maṣīrah is located...

Ghagha island is located at the westernmost extent of Abu Dhabi emirate, c.1 km from the UAE mainland. Survey and excavation by the Department of Culture and Tourism: Abu Dhabi has identified two previously unknown Neolithic sites on the island (GHG0014 and GHG0063). GHG0014 comprises a cluster of stone-built rooms, preserved to nearly 1 m in heigh...

Archaeological investigations of the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene human occupation of the nearly 3 million square kilometres that make up the vast and diverse landscapes of the Arabian Peninsula are hampered by a series of shortcomings. Some of the problems when trying to reconstruct human occupation and behaviour based on material cultu...

Desert kites are hunting mega-traps found from the Aralo-Caspian zone to Western Arabia. These structures present a singular and systematic layout suggesting that they were associated with an elaborate and standardized hunting technique. However, the morphology of these structures is very diversified (size, shape, and number of constituent elements...

Recent work has revealed that there are three major Neolithic settlements present on Marawah Island, Abu Dhabi, known as MR1, MR2.5, and MR11. Excavations at the settlement of MR11 are radically changing our ideas of Neolithic architecture, in particular the spatial organization of settlements. MR11 comprises a group of seven mounds (Areas A to G),...

A series of eight dwelling sites were discovered recently in south-eastern Jordan, directly associated with eight mass-hunting structures: desert kites. These associated sites also share a clear chronological framework, as they are all dated to the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. The archaeological material, mostly made up of abundant lithic in...

The Camel Site is in the north of Saudi Arabia in the province of al-Jawf. It is characterised by three decaying sandstone hillocks with life-sized 3D engravings (or reliefs) of camels and equids likely carved during later prehistory. A survey in the central area of the site identified clusters of flakes and other flintknapping remains in the lower...

New desert kites have been discovered over the past two years during the observation of satellite images of north-western Arabia. Great numbers of these large archaeological traps were known prior to this from the Aralo-Caspian zone to the Arabian Peninsula. Many of these recent discoveries are constructions without the same closed enclosures as ki...

In southern and south-eastern Arabia, the Neolithic developed between 6500 and 3100 BCE. In the Sultanate of Oman, occupation occurred along wadi banks, around paleolakes, and at large shell-middens accumulated on the shores of the Arabian Sea. Nevertheless, the origins and development of human occupation on the Arabian Sea islands are poorly known...

R. Foote, M. Guagnin, I. Périssé & S. Karacic (eds), 2022. Revealing Cultural Landscapes in North-West Arabia (Supplement to Volume 51 of the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies): 82–109. Oxford: Archaeopress.

The life-sized, naturalistic reliefs at the Camel Site in northern Arabia have been severely damaged by erosion. This, coupled with substantial destruction of the surrounding archaeological landscape, has made a chronological assessment of the site difficult. To overcome these problems, we combined results from a wide range of methods, including an...

This special issue of Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy is the result of the conference ‘Archaeological Failaka, Recent and Ongoing Investigations’ organised at the National Library of Kuwait by the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters (NCCAL) of the State of Kuwait and the French Research Center of the Arabian Peninsula (CEFREPA, former...

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.

Résumé. Depuis une dizaine d’années, la mise en ligne libre des images satellitaires à haute résolution a permis la découverte de très nombreux desert kites, constructions en pierre de très grande taille qui jalonnent les marges désertiques du Croissant fertile. Leur nombre et l’étendue de leur répartition géographique laissent soupçonner un phénom...

New World archaeologists have amply demonstrated that fluted point technology is specific to Terminal Pleistocene American cultures. Base-fluted, and rarer tip-fluted, projectile points from the Americas have been well-documented by archaeologists for nearly a century. Fluting is an iconic stone tool manufacturing method and a specific action that...

Prehistoric stone structures are prominent and well-studied in the Levantine desert margins. In northern Arabia, however, such structures have received less attention. This article presents the results of investigations of a 35m-long stone platform, first constructed in the mid sixth millennium BC, overlooking the oasis of Dûmat al-Jandal in northe...

Discovered in March 2015, the sites of DAJ‐112 and DAJ‐125 in the Al‐Jawf province of northern Saudi Arabia consist of a large collection of surface lithic artefacts that can be compared to well‐known Pre‐Pottery Neolithic (PPN) B technology from the Levant: the two sites include bidirectional blade technology with naviform core preparation and opp...

Lithic projectile points always had an important diagnostic value for documenting the development and expansion of Arabian Neolithic material culture (c. eighth–fourth millennium BC) and subsistence strategies due to the remarkable abundance of surface assemblages. Given the limitations of traditional arrowhead typology for analysing the increasing...

In 1992, an archaeological survey of Marawah Island conducted by the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey identified two significant Neolithic settlements known as MR1 and MR11. Both sites are constructed on prominent rocky platforms located towards the western end of the island. In 2000 and 2003, small‐scale excavations took place at MR11, with...

Despite its significant geographic position along the southern corridor into and out of Africa, little is known of the period between 70 and 12 thousand years ago in South Arabia. The existing archeological data come from a handful of lithic surface scatters and buried sites with broad chronological constraints. Here, we report the open-air site of...

Although Middle Palaeolithic stratified and dated sites are still rare in Arabia, recent archaeological, palaeoenvironmental, population genetic, geomatic and geochronological studies have noticeably contributed to a re-evaluation of the prehistory of the region. Here, we report the discovery of a stratified open-air Middle Palaeolithic site in cen...

Although Middle Palaeolithic stratified and dated sites are still rare in Arabia, recent archaeological, palaeoenvironmental, population genetic, geomatic and geochronological studies have noticeably contributed to a re-evaluation of the prehistory of the region. Here, we report the discovery of a stratified open-air Middle Palaeolithic site in cen...

In a recent article, Malkinson and his colleagues (Malkinson et al., 2017) have put forward a series of hypotheses on the function, seasonality, and chronology of kites discovered on the slopes of Mount Aragats, in Armenia. Among their hypotheses relevant to function, Malkinson et al. propose that the kites without antennae would have been meant fo...

Lithic projectile points are popular objects of analysis as they reflect both aspects of social identity as well as adaptation as weapon system and hunting strategies. Their abundance in the Neolithic assemblages of the Arabian Peninsula, together with the paucity of stratified datable sites, always conferred to these lithic implements an important...

How have humans colonised the entire planet and reshaped its ecosystems in the process? This unique and groundbreaking collection of essays explores human movement through time, the impacts of these movements on landscapes and other species, and the ways in which species have co-evolved and transformed each other as a result. Exploring the spread o...

For a long time, Arabia was perceived as a marginal, peripheral and passive recipient region in prehistory, exploiting innovations from more important centres of development in its vicinity. This chapter aims to qualify this once dominant view. It shows Arabia rather as a largely independent sphere of cultural development, exploring the adaptive ev...

Dispersals, connectivity and indigeneity in Arabian prehistory

: : In Arabia, the emergence of the first maritime societies of the early Holocene used to be a theme unexplored by archaeology. For the first time, a glimpse of these 9th and 8th millennium BCE communities living on the Omani shores of the Arabian Sea has recently been possible thanks to data from the Natif 2 cave. These hunter-gatherers were sele...

Nubian Levallois technology is the defining characteristic of the Middle Paleolithic or Middle Stone Age technocomplex known as the Nubian Complex. Until recently, this technocomplex was found exclusively in northeastern Africa; however, archaeological surveys conducted across the Arabian Peninsula in the last decade have expanded the known distrib...

Kites in Armenia were recently discovered, and investigations into their construction, typology and dating are ongoing. With these discoveries, it has become necessary to investigate a series of unsolved questions. In order to test the functions of kites, we conducted a synthesis describing the occurrence and habitat range of Late Pleistocene and H...

Since 2013, the authors have conducted archaeological surveys across the Al-Jawf province in northern Saudi Arabia. In the past two seasons, 48 sites were mapped and characterized by the presence of Levallois technology and, therefore, attributed to the Middle Paleolithic of Arabia. Preferential Levallois reduction using different methods of dorsal...

In the last few years, the number of inventoried kites has increased fivefold, and the known distribution zone has been greatly extended across the Near East, Arabia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. High-resolution satellite images provide substantial amounts of data that can be subjected to geomatics analysis. The resulting spatial data is used to...

Kites have often been interpreted as traps built for hunting purposes. This is based on ethnographic parallels, and recurrent references of the habitat range of animals and possible migration routes. Faunal remains from limited zones and from a selection of sites around kites were studied, particularly from northern Syria and eastern Jordan. When c...