OAR@UM Collection:

Response to the review by Philip Boyes of my recent book

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Response to the review by Philip Boyes of my recent book Abstract: It is not customary to draw up responses to reviews of books, but at times this must be done. Such is the case with the review by Philip Boyes of my book, namely, How to read ancient Texts: with a Focus on select Phoenician Inscriptions from Malta, Oxford: Archaeopress, 2024 (also Open Access) that appeared in the recent issue of Journal of Semitic Studies, LXX/2 Autumn 2025 (pages e26-e28, at doi: 10.1093/jss/fgaf003).

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal Authors: Hallett, Emily Y.; Leonardi, Michela; Cerasoni, Jacopo Niccolò; Will, Manuel; Beyer, Robert; Krapp, Mario; Kandel, Andrew W.; Manica, Andrea; Scerri, Eleanor M. L. Abstract: All contemporary Eurasians trace most of their ancestry to a small population that dispersed out of Africa about 50,000 years ago (ka)1–9. By contrast, fossil evidence attests to earlier migrations out of Africa10–15. These lines of evidence can only be reconciled if early dispersals made little to no genetic contribution to the later, major wave. A key question therefore concerns what factors facilitated the successful later dispersal that led to long-term settlement beyond Africa. Here we show that a notable expansion in human niche breadth within Africa precedes this later dispersal. We assembled a pan-African database of chronometrically dated archaeological sites and used species distribution models (SDMs) to quantify changes in the bioclimatic niche over the past 120,000 years. We found that the human niche began to expand substantially from 70 ka and that this expansion was driven by humans increasing their use of diverse habitat types, from forests to arid deserts. Thus, humans dispersing out of Africa after 50 ka were equipped with a distinctive ecological flexibility among hominins as they encountered climatically challenging habitats, providing a key mechanism for their adaptive success. Description: Supplementary information is available with this article.

Assessing the potential of latent class modelling for classifying stone artefacts and the quantification of technological diversity

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Assessing the potential of latent class modelling for classifying stone artefacts and the quantification of technological diversity Authors: Timbrell, Lucy; Grove, Matt; Scerri, Eleanor M. L. Abstract: Archaeological typologies are used to determine the number and diversity of artefact forms within a prehistoric toolkit. However, objective classification is challenging, complicating cross-assemblage comparisons. We explore the potential of latent class modelling (LCM) for grouping stone tools based on their morphological and technological attributes. LCM identifies unobserved (‘latent’) subgroups that share certain observed characteristics, producing posterior probabilities of artefact membership to latent classes. Applied to a large dataset of Middle Stone Age and Middle Palaeolithic lithics from northern Africa and Arabia, we compare LCM results with the original typological assessment of each artefact as well as hierarchical clustering, another non-model based unsupervised technique of group classification. Our results show that, although both methods are equally (in)coherent with the original typology, LCM can group artefacts with important technological and morphological characteristics, such as diverse bifacially worked pieces and different types of unretouched Levallois products. We further evaluate LCM performance using permutation tests, which highlight that our model fits the observed data substantially better than any randomly generated structure. Using latent class proportions, we then quantify technological diversity robustly across varying sample sizes. Assemblage-level diversity patterns indicate that northern African MSA toolkits are generally variable, with only a limited number of assemblages departing significantly from null expectations. Overall, LCM offers a transparent, probabilistic framework for capturing the polythetic nature of stone tool assemblages and provides an objective basis for refining lithic typologies grounded in measurable morphological and technological criteria. Description: Supplementary information is attached with this article.

Assessing the intensity of Late Quaternary humid phases in the Nefud Desert, northern Arabia

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Assessing the intensity of Late Quaternary humid phases in the Nefud Desert, northern Arabia Authors: Clark-Wilson, Richard; Armitage, Simon J.; Candy, Ian; Breeze, Paul S.; Drake, Nick A.; Groucutt, Huw S.; Alsharekh, Abdullah M.; Al-Jibreen, Faisal; Petraglia, Michael D.; Ryves, David B. Abstract: The climate history of the major dryland zones of the world, such as the Saharo–Arabian Desert belt, plays a key role in the dispersal of early humans through these intermittently inhospitable regions. Here, we assess the relative intensity of Late Quaternary humid phases in northern Arabia through lithological, geochemical, palaeoecological and geochronological analysis of three sediment sequences in the Nefud Desert. Two sequences are marl beds that accumulated in perennial, groundwater‐fed lake systems during two distinct humid phases that occurred in MIS 5e and MIS 5a. The third records sediment accumulation within an ephemeral lake system during the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene. The altitude of the two MIS 5 deposits indicates that the water table must have reached altitudes of >929m ASL (MIS 5e) and >922m ASL (MIS 5a). In contrast, the sedimentary characteristics of the early Holocene sequence imply that, during this interval, the water table was <917m ASL. These results indicate that, in relative terms, the humid phase of the Holocene was significantly drier than other Late Quaternary humid phases, a conclusion that is consistent with a growing body of evidence from across the Saharo–Arabian Desert belt. These findings are discussed relative to human dispersal/occupation and palaeoclimatic conditions in northern Arabia during Late Quaternary humid phases.