Polylinear incursions and autochthonous adaptations: Neolithisation and sustainable sedentarisation of the Arabian Peninsula

In their cautionary assessment, Crassard and Drechsler (2013) evaluated the basic obstacles and fallacies current Arabia’s Neolithic research is concerned with. In an earlier account, Uerpmann, Potts, and Uerpmann (2009) elaborated on the regional complexity for eastern Arabia, illustrating these basic problems from another perspective: Apart from the specific natural detriments (preservation and accessibility of Arabia’s Neolithic sedimentary environments), Neolithic research is mainly handicapped by: (1) hitherto dispersed fragmentary information from regions of different natural conditions; (2) restricted and rather new field research; and (3) persistent preconceptions influenced mainly by perspectives from the Levant and the Neolithic Package model. These issues lead to an underestimation of Neolithic Arabia’s capacities to have undergone their very own trajectories, reduced the chances to identify cultures as developments in their own right; they Received: 17 July 2019 | Revised: 3 October 2019 | Accepted: 3 October 2019 DOI: 10.1111/aae.12146


|
GEBEL even can alter or fake their (pre-)historic visibility, and hinder an overall supra-regional understanding and approach for Arabia. As examples to avert such pitfalls, we mention here the RASA Project of McCorriston and others (McCorriston, 2013) in the Hadramawt as well as the study by Méry and Charpentier (2013) as paradigmatic identifications of a regional Arabian Neolithic suitable for an integration into a holistic supra-regional approach.
This contribution is an advocacy to structure arid Arabia's future Neolithic research along guiding holistic ideas/principles and epistemic procedures. 1 1. The understanding of Arabia's Neolithic should refer to the unique characteristic of the Neolithic-productive lifeways 2 -only. Sedentarisation is not a primary and relevant characteristic unless its productive lifeways sustainably established permanent settlements; this happened-according to current research-for Arabia only in post-Neolithic times by the focus on oasis habitats in the fourth millennium BCE (Gebel 2013(Gebel , 2016(Gebel , 2017a. Implicit and explicit perspectives from the Fertile Crescent on Arabia's Neolithic are to be controlled or excluded. 2. Trajectories are seen as developing between the poles of polylinear incursions and autochthonous adaptations, influencing the socio-economic and cognitive behaviour of interacting mobile non-local and local late hunter-gatherers, long-distance pastoralists and other productive resident or otherwise philopatric groups. 3. Neolithic research demands ever-updated holistic perspectives and frameworks on Arabia's Neolithisation without which regional Neolithic trajectories and adaptations cannot be identified or described for their "blend" of Neolithic and non-Neolithic characteristics and their role in the supra-regional development. 4. Since fragmentary information must be processed to form the necessary holistic framework, formal epistemic procedures must guarantee the testability, traceability and management of the result's growing complexity and that of revised hypotheses. Preferably, this is done by a system or set of constantly updated and tested hypotheses, constantly amended by new data and allowing testing of new information. To start, two preliminary and yet simple theses sets are suggested at the end of this contribution.
In the following, we discuss these guiding holistic principles and epistemic procedures in more detail.

PRODUCTIVE LIFEWAYS
The highly diversified vastness of arid Arabia today offers 39 natural, or to be precise, physiographic distinct regions, hosting some 162 sub-regions in its five major geographic zones (Abdulsalam, 1988). While the early to mid-Holocene climate regimes, hydrology and steppe/desert landscapes were much different from today, these figures give an idea of how any Neolithic evolution must have been governed and diverged by the local and regional blends of natural potentials and deficits. Needless to say, (1) the higher natural sensitivity of the Arabian lands demanded other forces and more flexible mechanisms of permanent adaptation within their habitats, and (2) these conditions excluded many substantial ingredients of the Fertile Crescent's "Neolithic packages". As even the more favoured early Holocene environments of Arabia could not host "Neolithic package" developments as in Anatolia, the Zagros or the Levant, we should try to identify those Neolithic productive lifeways (Gebel, 2014) suitable to establish at least temporarily in refugia or to connect to Neolithic core zones by corridors: it appears that steppe economies such as (mobile) caprine pastoralism and niche agriculture-both demanding suitable hydraulic behaviour in landscapes (Gebel, 2013(Gebel, , 2016(Gebel, , 2017a)-were practised with temporal success during favoured climate periods.

| 121
GEBEL land: Abu-Azizeh & Tarawneh, 2015;Fujii, 2018;Marcucci et al., 2014 and references there). Especially when abundant and reliable resources allow sorts of sedentary life based on predictable and reliable subsistence strategies without substantial storage and/or even surplus production, they already should be addressed as of Neolithic character. In all this, philopatric behaviour may occur or even be a strong factor, especially when central burial grounds are "supportive" or "instrumental" for territorial claims and behaviour (Fig. 1). Can we expect that habitation sites' chipped stone technologies and tool kits are more characterised by opportunistic (ad hoc) and non-formal primary production and limited shares of "style tools", while specialised sites may testify more standardisation in primary production, tools and tool kits, including the use of non-local raw material (observations made at own surveys near Sakakah, the south-eastern Badia, and near al-Ain, Abu Dhabi)? It may turn out to be misleading to understand some of the evidence as indicating "outposts" (e.g. Fujii, 2018;Fujii, al-Mansoor, Adachi, al-Khalifa, & Nagaya, forthcoming) rather than comprehending them as autonomous local/regional adaptations. Certainly, the latter were subject to polylinear incursions of technologies (e.g. Fig. 2 or , subsistence strategies, magic or ritual behaviour, or other paradigms. We should never forget that "incursions" also work in the opposite direction, as in the badia chert exports to settled Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (LPPNB) areas in the Jordanian Highlands, or the first (formal?) trilith recently found in LPPNB Ba'ja (Gebel et al., 2019: fig. 15).
The permanent establishment of sedentary life associated with a sustainable productive subsistence mode, an important but not crucial key characteristic of the Neolithic, appears by the "oasisisation" (Gebel, 2013(Gebel, , 2016 of the Arabian Peninsula in post-Neolithic times (fourth millennium BCE). In our view, the oasisisation needs to be part of Arabia's Neolithic debate as its sedentarisation represents a finally successful autonomous and autochthonous act that usually is considered a characteristic of the Neolithic Package: Neolithic "efforts" in sustainable sedentarisation on the Peninsula with elements of the Neolithic Package appear not to have been successful. However, and in general, due to Arabia's limited water resources and rather restricted commodification and consumption triggers, its cultures appear to have developed more conservatively in terms of innovations; long-distance networks may not have influenced this in sustainable ways.
The inland fringes beyond Arabia's coastal strips, where rich marine sources allowed productive shell-fishing/fishing, as well as productive hunter-gatherer cultures in the semi-arid fringes of the Fertile Crescent's settled zones, were contact areas with Arabia's inland hunter-gatherers. For example, in the badia, recent research by Abu-Azizeh and by Rollefson

AND AUTOCHTHONOUS ADAPTATIONS
The concept that Arabia's early to mid-Holocene trajectories resulted from these interacting developmental forces appears justified and obvious from the evidence we have so far; the theses sets, see below, are guided by this concept.
Polylinear incursions are understood as single or combined penetrations from outside of technologies, ideas, paradigms, and/or populations, triggered by natural and cultural processes. Polylinearity is chiefly caused and promoted by inland and marine corridors as well as the webs of favoured (mostly hydrologically or biotic) or special (mostly ritual sites and abiotic resources, e.g. the Fig. 3 evidence) localities they create and connect. Polylinearities may shift within the limits "granted" by climate oscillations, migrating ungulates, natural and artificial water access, all causing shifts in the territorial behaviour of people; they host both advancing and retreating incursions. In our understanding, incursions should not be mixed up with colonisations or outposts (sensu Rollefson, Rowan, & Wasse, 2014;Fujii, 2018;Fujii et al., forthcoming) as the latter more represent translocations still maintaining socio-economic ties or dependencies with their Autochthonous and/or autonomous adaptations are understood as results of inside adaptive processes of localities or regions which basically are expected to result from environmental shifts; it is also expected that these adaptations dealt conservatively with any incursive elements. There is a need to distinguish between the autochthonous (local and regional) and autonomous (self-reliant, self-contained) aspects in the adaptive processes. For example, the kite economy of around 7000 BCE appears to reflect autochthonous triggers while representing an autonomous socio-economy.
Most of Arabia`s early to mid-Holocene trajectories are the result of both forces; however, the vastness and the potential deficits of the Arabian lands appear to have conditioned conservative developmental paces with restricted innovation. It can mean that-in tendency-polylinear incursions always were less influential and less sustainable than autonomous and autochthonous adaptations, especially in the societal sectors (e.g., the general conformities we see in regional burial practices throughout millennia).

PERSPECTIVES AND FRAMEWORK ON ARABIA'S NEOLITHIC
Thus far, segmentary approaches characterise Arabia's Neolithic research. Much understanding is still based on regionally and chronologically restricted evidence, often still dominated by special expertise (chipped lithics, malacology, geoarchaeology, archaeozoology). While water is crucial for the understanding of Arabia's (pre-)history, no real archaeohydrological (only hydroarchaeological!) work was carried out . Quite unique is the predictive and supra-regional approach of Drechsler (2009). Of course, much of the past research development is a result of the pioneering character fieldwork has and of its political frameworks, seemingly not allowing much epistemic input and structuring so far.
In short: It is seen that the hitherto achieved body of data justifies and imperatively demands an integrated effort for a holistic perspective and concept on Arabia's Neolithic. It should be characterised by 1. using a testable holistic and supra-regional framework which 2. coordinates all disciplines already involved while further including archaeohydrological and etho-ontological studies, 3. trying to establish trans-or at least multidisciplinary research agendas. 3 The instrument to link these intentions by a jointly shared working basis meeting basic standards of testability and traceability could be theses sets which are proposed in the next section.

HYPOTHESES ON ARABIA'S NEOLITHISATION AND SEDENTARISATION (NINTH TO FOURTH MILLENNIA BCE) 4
There are not many testable procedures in humanities to deal with fragmentary information serving a holistic approach from the beginning. For a similar research situation, concerning the North Arabian mid Holocene pastoral well cultures and proto-oases, we successfully used constantly tested and amended theses sets (Gebel 2013(Gebel , 2016(Gebel , 2017a; the same procedure is suggested for Arabia's Neolithic. The following theses needed to be separated into two sets: four hypotheses deal with basic research demands, and seven hypotheses reflect Neolithic/sedentarisation trajectories. New evidence will demand constant testing and updating, splitting and extending the theses sets. Most statements of the following theses are elaborated in more detail in the referenced publications by Gebel and other literature mentioned there. Potentially important, but as yet unclear driving forces (such as gulf marine transgressions and Afro-Arabian interaction spheres) have been omitted from thesis building for the time being. a broad multidisciplinary scientific input appears more important to reach guiding and meaningful results than enlarging the body of archaeological samples. However, the hitherto neglected specific sociobiological and cultural behaviour (etho-and ontological studies) of humans in potentially water-deficit regions has to become the subject of research agendas. and coastal corridors between Arabia's interior and the Fertile Crescent's semi-arid fringes. Tr ajectory Hypothesis 2. During the eighth millennium BCE, steppe-lake environments promoted the establishment of productive temporary unsustainable and sustainable habitat-related socio-economies. Foraging landscapes in many regions became productive landscapes with access to foraging refugia. They were exploited by mobile, seasonal and possibly sedentary (i) Neolithic pastoral socio-economies ("palaeo-Bedouins") practising niche agriculture together with hunting and steppe water management (early socio-hydraulic adaptations), coexisting with (ii) various sorts of specialised but ephemeral indigenous productive foraging groups. One example of this is the kite economy, whose participants may also have taken up sorts of herding; another is the newly identified Maitan Rub al-Khali Middle and Late Neolithic (Maiorano et al., 2019), or many of the indigenous coastal and inland foraging cultures. In terms of research, work in Arabia's early and mid-Holocene demands significantly different research questions, project designs/strategies and field competency compared with those developed for the favoured Neolithic regions, including essential and more scientific input, especially archaeohydrological and geoarchaeological input; awareness for real multior transdisciplinary cooperation and methods; competence in deflated land geomorphology and horizontal stratigraphy; and migration archaeology, for example. In terms of research strategies, it requests that archaeo(hydro)logical research necessitates strictly sub-regional approaches and perspectives to evaluate the regional contributions forming the overall Arabian Neolithic trajectory in early and mid-Holocene times.