South Arabia’s prehistoric monument landscape shows social resilience to climate change

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0323544 May 28, 2025 1 / 24 OPEN ACCESS Citation: McCorriston J, Ball L, Harrower MJ, Hamilton IM, Ivory SJ, Senn MJ, et al. (2025) South Arabia’s prehistoric monument landscape shows social resilience to climate change. PLoS One 20(5): e0323544. https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0323544 Editor: Shai Gordin, Ariel University, ISRAEL Received: August 13, 2024 Accepted: April 9, 2025 Published: May 28, 2025 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0323544 Copyright: © 2025 McCorriston 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. RESEARCH ARTICLE South Arabia’s prehistoric monument landscape shows social resilience to climate change Joy McCorriston 1*, Lawrence Ball2¤a, Michael J. Harrower 3, Ian M. Hamilton2,4, Sarah J. Ivory5, Matthew J. Senn1¤b, Tara Steimer-Herbet 6, Abigail F. Buffington1¤c, ‘Ali Ahmad Al-Kathiri7, ‘Ali Musalam Al-Mahri7 1 Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America, 2 Department of Ecology, Evolution & Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio,

United States of America, 3 Department of Near Eastern Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, 4 Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America, 5 Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania, United States of America, 6 Laboratory of Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthropology, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, 7 Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, Salalah, Sultanate of Oman ¤a Current Address: Kent Wildlife Trust, Tyland Barn, Chatham Road, Sandling, Maidstone, Kent, United Kingdom ¤b Current Address: New York State Department of Transportation, Albany, New York, United States of America ¤c Current Address: Chronicle Heritage, Al-Ula, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia * mccorriston.1@osu.edu Abstract In arid regions across northern Africa, Asia and Arabia, ancient pastoralists con- structed small-scale stone monuments of varying form, construction, placement, age, and function. Classification studies of each type have inhibited a broader model of their collective and enduring role within desert socio-ecosystems. Our multivariate analysis of 371 archaeological monuments in the arid Dhofar region of Oman iden- tifies environmental and cultural factors that influenced variable placement and con- struction across a 7000-year history. Our results show that earlier monuments were built by larger, concurrent groups during the Holocene Humid Period (10,000–6000

cal BP). With increasing aridification, smaller groups constructed monuments and eventually switched to building them in repetitive visits. Our model emphasizes the core role of monuments as a flexible technology in social resilience among desert pastoralists. Introduction Difficult access in modern deserts and narrow typological foci in regional studies have hindered broad empirical models of how pastoralists built and used archaeo- logical monuments [1]. Chronological and spatial organization of desert monuments reflect the dynamic relationships among pastoralists and the arid ecosystems they embraced [2–4]. Pastoralists have persisted in the world’s arid regions even as