Evidence of Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Saudi Arabia

Pre-Pottery Neolithic assemblages are best known from the fertile areas of the Mediterranean Levant  with most research focussed on the internal cultural dynamics of the ‘core area’ of what is known as the Fertile Crescent.

General view of area near Jubbah with some other distinctive projectile points found at site JQ-101.

The development of the Neolithic in Southwest Asia has long been seen as a pivotal phase in human evolution and history;  a cultural and economic ‘revolution’, which fundamentally transformed the relationship between humans and their environments, paving the way for population explosion, a shift towards sedentary settlement and a profound change in technology.

However there has been (for a variety of reasons) less research devoted towards understanding the interactions between the core and peripheral regions.

One such site is  located at Jebel Qattar 101 (JQ-101), at Jubbah in the southern part of the Nefud Desert of northern Saudi Arabia and contains a large collection of stone tools, adjacent to an Early Holocene palaeolake.

Jebel Qattar lies around 500 kilometres beyond the previously identified geographic range of Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures. [...] pasthorizonspr.com

Reference: Crassard R, Petraglia MD, Parker AG, Parton A, Roberts RG, et al. (2013) Beyond the Levant: First Evidence of a Pre-Pottery Neolithic Incursion into the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia. PLoS ONE 8(7): e68061. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0068061