Erratum to: Refining landscape contexts for open-air, Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites: a case study from Muthanna Province, Southern Iraq

Abstract

Open-air Paleolithic sites in desert and semiarid landscapes provide interpretive quandaries because of the absence of depositional matrices and stratigraphic controls. This paper argues that datable and stratified vertical contexts may be preserved in the vicinity of open-air artifact scatters. These, in turn, may account for paleo-environmental conditions that would have attracted Paleolithic groups. The site in question is in the Southern Iraqi desert, a locale heretofore terra incognita for early hominin activity. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates were taken from ancient spring and dune deposits in a depression flanking the hamada surfaces on which the artifact distributions were found. Geochemical and granulometric studies were used to reconstruct the depositional histories of the spring locale, and the dates were projected onto contemporary oxygen isotope curves that serve as proxies for the climatic cycles operational across the greater Near East. The advent of OSL dating provides a new window for dating events and environments linked to Paleolithic chronologies. The locations of surface scatters may signify preservation of nearby micro-environments which could be proxies for structuring landscape and occupational chronologies.