TY - JOUR
T1 - South Arabia’s prehistoric monument landscape shows social resilience to climate change
AU - McCorriston, Joy
AU - Ball, Lawrence
AU - Harrower, Michael J.
AU - Hamilton, Ian M.
AU - Ivory, Sarah J.
AU - Senn, Matthew J.
AU - Steimer-Herbet, Tara
AU - Buffington, Abigail F.
AU - Al-Kathiri, Ali Ahmad
AU - Al-Mahri, Ali Musalam
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 McCorriston et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2025/5
Y1 - 2025/5
N2 - In arid regions across northern Africa, Asia and Arabia, ancient pastoralists constructed small-scale stone monuments of varying form, construction, placement, age, and function. Classification studies of each type have inhibited a broader model of their collective and enduring role within desert socio-ecosystems. Our multivariate analysis of 371 archaeological monuments in the arid Dhofar region of Oman identifies environmental and cultural factors that influenced variable placement and construction across a 7000-year history. Our results show that earlier monuments were built by larger, concurrent groups during the Holocene Humid Period (10,000–6000 cal BP). With increasing aridification, smaller groups constructed monuments and eventually switched to building them in repetitive visits. Our model emphasizes the core role of monuments as a flexible technology in social resilience among desert pastoralists.
AB - In arid regions across northern Africa, Asia and Arabia, ancient pastoralists constructed small-scale stone monuments of varying form, construction, placement, age, and function. Classification studies of each type have inhibited a broader model of their collective and enduring role within desert socio-ecosystems. Our multivariate analysis of 371 archaeological monuments in the arid Dhofar region of Oman identifies environmental and cultural factors that influenced variable placement and construction across a 7000-year history. Our results show that earlier monuments were built by larger, concurrent groups during the Holocene Humid Period (10,000–6000 cal BP). With increasing aridification, smaller groups constructed monuments and eventually switched to building them in repetitive visits. Our model emphasizes the core role of monuments as a flexible technology in social resilience among desert pastoralists.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0323544
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0323544
M3 - Article
C2 - 40434952
AN - SCOPUS:105006752311
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 20
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 5 May
M1 - e0323544
ER -
