EGU22-12497
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-12497
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Integrated approaches to locating Pleistocene archaeological and proxy sites in drylands

Paul Breeze1, Nick Drake1,2, Katie Manning1, and Michael Petraglia2
Paul Breeze et al.
  • 1King's College London, London, Uk
  • 2Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany

Surveying at the landscape scale to find archaeological sites is a particular challenge in the dryland environments of Arabia, the Sahara and other similar hyper-arid regions. Here we present how novel high-resolution palaeoydrological mapping of the entirety of the Saharo-Arabian desert belt has not only revealed large numbers of palaeolakes, shorelines and past drainage courses, but also proved particularly fruitful for finding new palaeolithic sites, and lacustrine pleistocene proxy records in Arabia. We describe the integrated survey methodologies which have helped us to locate large numbers of new sites in Arabia, including the earliest fossil and footprints of our species in Arabia, thus helping to enhance our understanding of pleistocene climatic change in these deserts, and of Hominin dispersals into and through them.

How to cite: Breeze, P., Drake, N., Manning, K., and Petraglia, M.: Integrated approaches to locating Pleistocene archaeological and proxy sites in drylands, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-12497, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-12497, 2022.