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      Cult, herding, and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia: Excavations at a mustatil east of AlUla

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          Abstract

          Since the 1970s, monumental stone structures now called mustatil have been documented across Saudi Arabia. However, it was not until 2017 that the first intensive and systematic study of this structure type was undertaken, although this study could not determine the precise function of these features. Recent excavations in AlUla have now determined that these structures fulfilled a ritual purpose, with specifically selected elements of both wild and domestic taxa deposited around a betyl. This paper outlines the results of the University of Western Australia’s work at site IDIHA-0008222, a 140 m long mustatil (IDIHA-F-0011081), located 55 km east of AlUla. Work at this site sheds new and important light on the cult, herding and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia, with the site revealing one of the earliest chronometrically dated betyls in the Arabian Peninsula and some of the earliest evidence for domestic cattle in northern Arabia.

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          THE INTCAL20 NORTHERN HEMISPHERE RADIOCARBON AGE CALIBRATION CURVE (0–55 CAL kBP)

          Radiocarbon ( 14 C) ages cannot provide absolutely dated chronologies for archaeological or paleoenvironmental studies directly but must be converted to calendar age equivalents using a calibration curve compensating for fluctuations in atmospheric 14 C concentration. Although calibration curves are constructed from independently dated archives, they invariably require revision as new data become available and our understanding of the Earth system improves. In this volume the international 14 C calibration curves for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as for the ocean surface layer, have been updated to include a wealth of new data and extended to 55,000 cal BP. Based on tree rings, IntCal20 now extends as a fully atmospheric record to ca. 13,900 cal BP. For the older part of the timescale, IntCal20 comprises statistically integrated evidence from floating tree-ring chronologies, lacustrine and marine sediments, speleothems, and corals. We utilized improved evaluation of the timescales and location variable 14 C offsets from the atmosphere (reservoir age, dead carbon fraction) for each dataset. New statistical methods have refined the structure of the calibration curves while maintaining a robust treatment of uncertainties in the 14 C ages, the calendar ages and other corrections. The inclusion of modeled marine reservoir ages derived from a three-dimensional ocean circulation model has allowed us to apply more appropriate reservoir corrections to the marine 14 C data rather than the previous use of constant regional offsets from the atmosphere. Here we provide an overview of the new and revised datasets and the associated methods used for the construction of the IntCal20 curve and explore potential regional offsets for tree-ring data. We discuss the main differences with respect to the previous calibration curve, IntCal13, and some of the implications for archaeology and geosciences ranging from the recent past to the time of the extinction of the Neanderthals.
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            Taphonomic and ecologic information from bone weathering

            Bones of recent mammals in the Amboseli Basin, southern Kenya, exhibit distinctive weathering characteristics that can be related to the time since death and to the local conditions of temperature, humidity and soil chemistry. A categorization of weathering characteristics into six stages, recognizable on descriptive criteria, provides a basis for investigation of weathering rates and processes. The time necessary to achieve each successive weathering stage has been calibrated using known-age carcasses. Most bones decompose beyond recognition in 10 to 15 yr. Bones of animals under 100 kg and juveniles appear to weather more rapidly than bones of large animals or adults. Small-scale rather than widespread environmental factors seem to have greatest influence on weathering characteristics and rates. Bone weathering is potentially valuable as evidence for the period of time represented in recent or fossil bone assemblages, including those on archeological sites, and may also be an important tool in censusing populations of animals in modern ecosystems.
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              Holocene forcing of the Indian monsoon recorded in a stalagmite from southern Oman.

              A high-resolution oxygen-isotope record from a thorium-uranium-dated stalagmite from southern Oman reflects variations in the amount of monsoon precipitation for the periods from 10.3 to 2.7 and 1.4 to 0.4 thousand years before the present (ky B.P.). Between 10.3 and 8 ky B.P., decadal to centennial variations in monsoon precipitation are in phase with temperature fluctuations recorded in Greenland ice cores, indicating that early Holocene monsoon intensity is largely controlled by glacial boundary conditions. After approximately 8 ky B.P., monsoon precipitation decreases gradually in response to changing Northern Hemisphere summer solar insolation, with decadal to multidecadal variations in monsoon precipitation being linked to solar activity.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – original draft
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: InvestigationRole: SoftwareRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – original draft
                Role: Formal analysisRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – original draft
                Role: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – original draft
                Role: Formal analysisRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Writing – original draft
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: ResourcesRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS One
                plos
                PLOS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                15 March 2023
                2023
                : 18
                : 3
                : e0281904
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
                [2 ] Museum of Natural History of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
                [3 ] Forensic Anthropology, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
                [4 ] Department of Tourism and Archaeology, College of Arts, University of Ha’il, Ha’il, Saudi Arabia
                [5 ] Research School of Earth Sciences, College of Science, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
                Griffith University, AUSTRALIA
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8620-938X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2553-1783
                Article
                PONE-D-22-25941
                10.1371/journal.pone.0281904
                10016714
                36920897
                7776de36-b390-4b54-8adb-9a4d40305b40
                © 2023 Kennedy 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.

                History
                : 19 September 2022
                : 2 February 2023
                Page count
                Figures: 28, Tables: 3, Pages: 50
                Funding
                Funded by: The Royal Commission for AlUla
                Award Recipient :
                HT, MK This work was funded by the Royal Commission for AlUla. https://www.rcu.gov.sa/en/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
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                Biology and Life Sciences
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