PALÉORIENT. vol. 17/2 - 1991

NOTES ET VARIETES

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY IN SOUTHWEST YEMEN, 1990

N.M. WHALEN and D.W. PEASE

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Introduction

In the summer of 1990 a small group of Americans and Yemeni from the General Organization for Antiquities surveyed an area in SW Yemen near the Bab al Mandab at the mouth of the Red Sea in search of Pleistocene sites (fig. 1). They were investigating the possibility that the earliest human migration into Asia during the Lower Pleistocene took place across the Bab al Mandab into Yemen rather than down the Nile and across the Sinai into the Levant. Discovery of sites in Yemen in the time range of 1.4 my would support the priority of the Bab al Mandab route into Asia.

Geography of southwest Yemen

Yemen is a small country in the SW corner of the Arabian peninsula. Paralleling the Red Sea and bisecting the country on a north-south axis is a high mountain range with elevations rising over 3 000 m. The eastern slopes of the mountains gradually descend into the world's largest sand desert, the Rub' al Khali. On its western side, the mountains drop down to a flat coastal plain 25-45 km wide called the Tihama. During seasonal monsoons, the Tihama receives heavier rainfall than the east side of the mountains. As a result, it is covered by deep layers of eroded sand, gravel and silt deposited by flowing wadis since Late Pleistocene times (1). The mountains paralleling the Tihama consist of bedded alkalic

flows and pyroclastic rocks including basalt, andésite, trachyte and rhyolite, materials used in the manufacture of stone artefacts.

Descending from the western slopes of the mountains toward the Tihama are a series of large alluvial fans of Lower Pleistocene age, dissected by small and intermediate size erosional cuts. Between the fans are wide, deep, and occasionally entrenched wadis. The surface of these braided fans consists of a pavement of gravel and cobbles, blackened by desert varnish. Intermingled among the cobbles are stone artefacts of Palaeolithic age.

Artefacts varied in size, technique of manufacture, typology, and degree of patination. On the basis of those four criteria, the artefacts were classified Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. Since flakes were the most frequent artefact form, their lengths (in mm) were used to calculate differences in size among the three traditions. Lower Palaeolithic artefacts were large (XL = 81.79; sd = 30.59); made by hard hammer percussion with rare Levallois; included diagnostic forms as polyhedrons, discoids, a pick and two handaxes; and were heavily patinated by a dense coat of black desert varnish (fig. 2 and 3). Middle Palaeolithic specimens were smaller (XL = 52.89; sd = 14.70); revealed soft hammer retouch and more Levallois; included scrapers, den- ticulates and notches, with a coating of patina ranging from pale yellow to light tan. Upper Palaeolithic samples were smallest of all (XL = 32.10; sd = 7.40); they showed evidence of pressure flaking; included many blade forms, some truncated and some fashioned into scrapers, with little or no patina.

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