Yeah, I mean 'ummmm, shoulders, knees and toes' doesn't have quite the ring for the little'ens.

Jimscale

(18/18) Finally, we show that caves are important places for the preservation of bone assemblages. This is key in hot and arid places where organic preservation is often poor.

(17/18) Once again, having spatially and temporally representative samples is key to any archaeological narrative. It is tempting to keep looking in the same places that we have already found stuff, but in the long run it holds us back.

(16/18) The paucity of Neolithic and Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology is interesting, and may suggest an arid zone between the ‘Ubaid’ related coastal story and the societies of NW Arabia with their mustatils etc.

(15/18) Our results add some information on a poorly understood area. We show that hominins were all across Arabia, but seem to have been more dense in some areas. We also highlight the importance of things like aquifer dynamics.

(14/18) The Middle Palaeolithic (about 200-50 thousand years ago in Arabia) seems to be the most well-represented period. While places like northwest Arabia have thousands of Holocene stone structures, this is the only significant one we found in our study area, a Bronze Age (?) pendant tomb.

(13/18) In most cases, artefacts were at a low density, but at one site (EP19.1) we found hundreds of stone tools, next to a deep cave shaft which was a water source in the past.

(12/18) Chert (flint) outcrops occur in the area, and this was used by ancient humans to make tools

(11/18) Prehistoric archaeological sites were previously unknown in the area. We found that the archaeology is relatively sparse compared to other parts of Arabia, but we recovered material extending back to the Lower Palaeolithic.

(10/18) Aswell as larger animals, there is an abundant record of microfauna.

(9/18) While there is a lot more work to do, we show that there are multiple species of animals present, extending back thousands of years. They reflect both carnivore (e.g. hyaena) accumulations, but also modification by flooding.

(8/18) This is one of the areas full of bones in Murrubeh Cave. Detailed studies are needed to understand these kind of assemblages. What animals are represented? How did the bones get there? How old are they?

(7/18) During out fieldwork we surveyed many caves. This is one of them, Murrubeh Cave. Thousands of animal bones are found in this cave.

(6/18) We recently published a paper on the speleothems (stalagmites etc) from this area, which unexpectedly produced an eight million year climate record. See the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(5/18) It’s a limestone area…and so there are caves. Lots of caves. Some are very hard to get into, but look impressive!

(4/18) This shows @elliescerri.bsky.social and myself trying to look at lithics (stone tools) during a sandstorm.

(3/18) Today, is a very dry and challenging landscape, with very few people around.

(2/18) We report findings from fieldwork a few years ago in this very poorly understood area (the red box) by our team of many colleagues including @mdpetraglia.bsky.social, the Heritage Commission of the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the Saudi Geological Survey, and many Universities and institutes.