A surface Middle Stone Age assemblage from the Red Sea coast of Eritrea: Implications for Upper Pleistocene human dispersals out of Africa

The Red Sea basin is emerging as an important region for testing current hypotheses concerning early human dispersal routes out of Africa. However, the direct peripheries of the basin, especially the African side had seen little prior Paleolithic research, hindering well informed assessment of the temporal and cultural contexts of prehistoric human adaptations in the region. Recent archaeological investigation at Asfet, along the southern edge of the Gulf of Zula (Red Sea coast of Eritrea) has recorded a surface Middle Stone Age (MSA) assemblage. The Asfet assemblage features prepared core and blade technologies, the production of points (triangular, perforators and small bifaces) and various retouched tools mainly on local raw material sources. Typologically, the assemblage exhibits reasonable affinity with northeast (NE) African, the Nile Valley and Southern Arabian MSA Industries. Given the paucity of Paleolithic record from the western side of the Red Sea basin that can be compared with existing MSA datasets from the Horn of Africa, the Nile Valley and Arabian Peninsula, the discovery of an MSA assemblage along the Eritrean coast provides a much needed reference data to assess the role of the Red Sea coast as a potential refugium and dispersal corridor for early humans.