Jebel Faya
Jebel Faya (FAY-NE1) is an archaeological site near Al-Madam, Sharjah Emirate, UAE. It contains tool assemblages from the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, the Neolithic and the Paleolithic. Because its deepest assemblage has been dated to 125,000 years ago, it may be the world's most ancient settlement yet discovered of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa.
Excavations at Jebel Faya were first conducted between 2003 and 2010 by Simon J. Armitage, Sabah A. Jasim, Anthony E. Marks, Adrian G. Parker, Vitaly I. Usik, and Hans-Peter Uerpmann. Knut Bretzke, Nicholas J. Conard, and Hans-Peter Uerpmann also reported on the FAY-NE1 sequence after conducting excavations between 2009 and 2013. Additional excavations have studied the site’s environmental and geologic context (see Bretzke et. al. 2013, Parton et. al. 2015, and Rosenberg et. al. 2011). Although Jebel Faya’s Paleolithic context has been more intensively studied, in 2013 Hans-Peter Uerpmann, Margarethe Uerpmann, Adelina Kutterer, and Sabah A. Jasim published findings on the Neolithic period at the site.
Jebel Faya is a limestone mountain outlier in the Central Region of the Emirate of Sharjah, UAE. The archaeological site itself is called FAY-NE1, a rock shelter located at the northeastern end of Jebel Faya. Archaeologists have excavated several trenches at the site, with an area of over 150 m2 excavated in total. It has a 5 m deep stratified sequence of archaeological levels, containing deposits from the Bronze and Iron Ages, the Neolithic, and the Paleolithic.
Paleolithic occupations at Jebel Faya have been linked to humid periods in southern Arabia, in which freshwater availability and vegetation cover of the area would have increased and supported human subsistence. In 2013, Bretzke et. al. analyzed sediment columns from trenches at FAY-NE1. While Assemblages A, B, and C showed evidence of vegetation, the layers lacking archaeological deposits showed evidence of desiccation. Additional studies of alluvial fan records and relic lake deposits in the region have supported this theory that humid periods may have offered multiple opportunities for human dispersal in southern Arabia.
The Paleolithic layers at FAY-NE1 were first described by Armitage et. al. and were dated using single-grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL).
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