Invisible Herders, Visible Traces: A Spatio-Chemical and Remote Sensing Approach to Deciphering Pastoral Landscapes in Dhofar, Oman
References
- African Union. 2010. Policy Framework for Pastoralism in Africa: Securing, Protecting and Improving the Lives, Livelihoods and Rights of Pastoralist Communities.
- Aitchison, J. 1982. ‘The statistical analysis of compositional data’. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B: Statistical Methodology, 44(2): 139–160. DOI: 10.1111/j.2517-6161.1982.tb01195.x
- Al-Kindi, KM, Al Nadhairi, R and Al Akhzami, S. 2023. ‘Dynamic change in normalised vegetation index (NDVI) from 2015 to 2021 in Dhofar, southern Oman in response to the climate change’. Agriculture, 13(3):
592 . DOI: 10.3390/agriculture13030592 - Arnold, R, Haug, J-K, Lange, M and Friesen, J. 2020. ‘Impact of forest cover change on available water resources: long-term forest cover dynamics of the semi-arid Dhofar cloud forest, Oman’. Frontiers in Earth Science, 8:
299 . DOI: 10.3389/feart.2020.00299 - Barba, L and Ortiz, A. 1992. ‘Analisis quimico de pisos de ocupacion: un caso etnografico en Tlaxcala, Mexico’. Latin American Antiquity, 3(1): 63–82. DOI: 10.2307/971930
- Belhadj Slimen, I, Najar, T, Ghram, A and Abdrrabba, M. 2016. ‘Heat stress effects on livestock: molecular, cellular and metabolic aspects, a review’. Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition, 100(3): 401–412. DOI: 10.1111/jpn.12379
- Ben-Dor, E, Irons, JR and Epema, GF. 1999.
‘Soil reflectance’ . In: Rencz, AN (ed.) Remote Sensing for the Earth Sciences, Manual of Remote Sensing, pp. 111–188. New York: Wiley. - Biagetti, S. 2025. ‘The long road: ethnoarchaeology, pastoralism and the reconfiguration of archaeological knowledge’. Cambridge Prisms: Drylands, 2: e
15 . DOI: 10.1017/dry.2025.10011 - Biagetti, S, Alcaina-Mateos, J, Ruiz-Giralt, A, Lancelotti, C, Groenwald, P, Ibañez-Insa, J, Gur-Arie, S, Morton, F and Merlo, S. 2021. ‘Identifying anthropogenic features at Seoke (Botswana) using pXRF: expanding the record of southern African stone walled sites’. PLoS ONE, 16(4):
e0250776 . DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250776 - Biagetti, S and Howe, T. 2017. ‘Variability is the key: towards a diachronic view of pastoralism’. Nomadic Peoples, 21(2): 167–172. DOI: 10.3197/np.2017.210201
- Biagetti, S, Ruiz-Giralt, A, Rix, KS, Koutroumpas, A, Ibañez-Insa, J, Lancelotti, C, Garcia-Tuset, N, Kerfant, CE, Grillo, KM, Hildebrand, EA, Lonyala, J, Mvimi, M, Merlo, S, Lucarini, G, Lischi, S and Madella, M. 2026. ‘Developing geo-ethnoarchaeological methods for studying archaeological pastoral sites: the CAMP project’. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 33(1):
29 . DOI: 10.1007/s10816-025-09759-9 - Charpentier, V, Maiorano, MP, Marchand, G, Vosges, J and Borgi, F. 2023. ‘Twelve years of the Arabian Seashores project: how the extensive investigation of coastal Oman changed the paradigm of the Arabian Neolithic’. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, 34(S1): S1–S21. DOI: 10.1111/aae.12236
- Clark, RN. 1999.
‘Spectroscopy of rocks and minerals, and principles of spectroscopy’ . In: Rencz, AN (ed.) Manual of Remote Sensing, Volume 3, Remote Sensing for the Earth Sciences, pp. 3–58. New York: John Wiley and Sons. - Curran, PJ. 1989. ‘Remote sensing of foliar chemistry’. Remote Sensing of Environment, 30(3): 271–278. DOI: 10.1016/0034-4257(89)90069-2
- Drury, SA. 1987. Image Interpretation in Geology. London: Allen and Unwin. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-9393-4
- Egozcue, JJ, Pawlowsky-Glahn, V, Mateu-Figueras, G and Barceló-Vidal, C. 2003. ‘Isometric logratio transformations for compositional data analysis’. Mathematical Geology, 35(3): 279–300. DOI: 10.1023/A:1023818214614
- FAO. 2020. Innovative Pastoralism: Achieving Productivity and Sustainability for Food Security. DOI: 10.4060/ca9261en
- FAO. 2021. Pastoralism – Making Variability Work. DOI: 10.4060/cb5823en
- Filzmoser, P and Hron, K. 2008. ‘Outlier detection for compositional data using robust methods’. Mathematical Geosciences, 40(3): 233–248. DOI: 10.1007/s11004-007-9141-5
- Filzmoser, P, Hron, K and Templ, M. 2018. Applied Compositional Data Analysis: With Worked Examples in R. Springer Series in Statistics. Cham: Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-96422-5
- Galletti, CS, Turner, BL and Myint, SW. 2016. ‘Land changes and their drivers in the cloud forest and coastal zone of Dhofar, Oman, between 1988 and 2013’. Regional Environmental Change, 16(7): 2141–2153. DOI: 10.1007/s10113-016-0942-2
- Gao, B. 1996. ‘NDWI-a normalized difference water index for remote sensing of vegetation liquid water from space’. Remote Sensing of Environment, 58(3): 257–266. DOI: 10.1016/S0034-4257(96)00067-3
- Goetz, AFH. 2009. ‘Three decades of hyperspectral remote sensing of the earth: a personal view’. Remote Sensing of Environment, 113(S1): S5–S16. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2007.12.014
- Gomez, C, Dharumarajan, S, Féret, J-B, Lagacherie, P, Ruiz, L and Sekhar, M. 2019. ‘Use of Sentinel-2 time-series images for classification and uncertainty analysis of inherent biophysical property: case of soil texture mapping’. Remote Sensing, 11(5):
565 . DOI: 10.3390/rs11050565 - Goulard, M and Voltz, M. 1992. ‘Linear coregionalization model: tools for estimation and choice of cross-variogram matrix’. Mathematical Geology, 24(3): 269–286. DOI: 10.1007/BF00893750
- Greenacre, M and Wood, JR. 2024. ‘A comprehensive workflow for compositional data analysis in archaeometry, with code in R’. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 16(10):
171 . DOI: 10.1007/s12520-024-02070-w - Habeeb, AAM, Marai, IFM and Kamal, TH. 1992.
‘Heat stress’ . In: Phillips, CJC and Piggins, D (eds.) Farm Animals and the Environment, pp. 27–47. Wallingford: CAB International. - Hilal, A, Bangroo, SA, Kirmani, NA, Wani, JA, Biswas, A, Bhat, MI, Farooq, K, Bashir, O and Shah, TI. 2024.
‘Geostatistical modeling-a tool for predictive soil mapping’ . In: Remote Sensing in Precision Agriculture. Elsevier. pp. 389–418. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-323-91068-2.00011-4 - Hildebrand, EA, Grillo, KM, Sawchuk, EA, Pfeiffer, SK, Conyers, LB, Goldstein, ST, Hill, AC, Janzen, A, Klehm, CE, Helper, M, Kiura, P, Ndiema, E, Ngugi, C, Shea, JJ and Wang, H. 2018. ‘A monumental cemetery built by eastern Africa’s first herders near Lake Turkana, Kenya’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(36): 8942–8947. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1721975115
- Honeychurch, W and Makarewicz, CA. 2016. ‘The archaeology of pastoral nomadism’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 45: 341–359. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-102215-095827
- Horisk, KE, Ivory, SJ, McCorriston, J, McHale, M, Al Mehri, A, Anderson, A, Anderson, RS and Al Kathiri, AA. 2023. ‘Vegetation dynamics in Dhofar, Oman, from the late Holocene to present inferred from rock hyrax middens’. Quaternary Research, 116: 12–29. DOI: 10.1017/qua.2023.42
- Huete, AR. 1988. ‘A soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI)’. Remote Sensing of Environment, 25(3): 295–309. DOI: 10.1016/0034-4257(88)90106-X
- Hunt, AMW and Speakman, RJ. 2015. ‘Portable XRF analysis of archaeological sediments and ceramics’. Journal of Archaeological Science, 53: 626–638. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2014.11.031
- Hunt, GR. 1977. ‘Spectral signatures of particulate minerals in the visible and near infrared’. Geophysics, 42(3): 501–513. DOI: 10.1190/1.1440721
- Kim, M-J, Lee, H-I, Choi, J-H, Lim, KJ and Mo, C. 2022. ‘Development of a soil organic matter content prediction model based on supervised learning using vis-NIR/SWIR spectroscopy’. Sensors, 22(14):
5129 . DOI: 10.3390/s22145129 - Kynčlová, P, Hron, K and Filzmoser, P. 2017. ‘Correlation between compositional parts based on symmetric balances’. Mathematical Geosciences, 49(6): 777–796. DOI: 10.1007/s11004-016-9669-3
- Lane, PJ. 2016.
‘Entangled banks and the domestication of East African pastoralist landscapes’ . In: Fernandini, F and Der, L (eds.). Archaeology of Entanglement, pp. 127–150. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. - Lischi, S. 2022. Settlement Dynamics and Territorial Organization in Dhofar between the Bronze Age and Late Antiquity: Understanding the Settlement Process of the Khor Rori Area and Development of a New Regional Cultural Model. Unpublished thesis (PhD). University of Pisa.
- Lischi, S. 2025. ‘DHOMIAP project (2022–23): new archaeological discoveries in Dhofar’. Athar – Bulletin of Archaeological Research in the Sultanate of Oman, 1: 134–140.
- Lubos, C, Dreibrodt, S and Bahr, A. 2016. ‘Analysing spatio-temporal patterns of archaeological soils and sediments by comparing pXRF and different ICP-OES extraction methods’. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 9: 44–53. DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.06.037
- Makarewicz, CA. 2013. ‘A pastoralist manifesto: breaking stereotypes and re-conceptualizing pastoralism in the Near Eastern Neolithic’. Levant, 45(2): 159–174. DOI: 10.1179/0075891413Z.00000000023
- Marshall, F, Reid, REB, Goldstein, S, Storozum, M, Wreschnig, A, Hu, L, Kiura, P, Shahack-Gross, R and Ambrose, SH. 2018. ‘Ancient herders enriched and restructured African grasslands’. Nature, 561(7723): 387–390. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0456-9
- Marshall, F and Weissbrod, L. 2011. ‘Domestication processes and morphological change: through the lens of the donkey and African pastoralism’. Current Anthropology, 52(S4): S397–S413. DOI: 10.1086/658389
- Martín-Fernández, JA, Buxeda i Garrigós, J and Pawlowsky-Glahn, V. 2015.
‘Logratio analysis in archeometry: principles and methods’ . In: Barceló, JA and Bogdanovic, I (eds.). Mathematics and Archaeology, pp. 178–189. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. DOI: 10.1201/b18530 - Matheron, G. 1963. ‘Principles of geostatistics’. Economic Geology, 58(8): 1246–1266. DOI: 10.2113/gsecongeo.58.8.1246
- McCorriston, J, Ball, L, Harrower, MJ, Hamilton, IM, Ivory, SJ, Senn, MJ, Steimer-Herbet, T, Buffington, AF, Al-Kathiri, AA and Al-Mahri, AM. 2025. ‘South Arabia’s prehistoric monument landscape shows social resilience to climate change’. PLoS One, 20(5):
e0323544 . DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0323544 - McCorriston, J, Buffington, A, Olson, K, Martin, L, Abu-Azizeh, W, Everhart, T, Al Maashani, A, Al Kathiri, AA and Al Mehri, A. 2020. ‘Ancient pastoral settlement in the Dhofar mountains: archaeological excavations at Shakil and Halqoot’. Journal of Oman Studies, 21: 152–171.
- McFeeters, SK. 1996. ‘The use of the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) in the delineation of open water features’. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 17(7): 1425–1432. DOI: 10.1080/01431169608948714
- Middleton, WD. 2004. ‘Identifying chemical activity residues on prehistoric house floors: a methodology and rationale for multi-elemental characterization of a mild acid extract of anthropogenic sediments’. Archaeometry, 46(1): 47–65. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4754.2004.00143.x
- Middleton, WD and Price, TD. 1996. ‘Identification of activity areas by multi-element characterization of sediments from modern and archaeological house floors using inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy’. Journal of Archaeological Science, 23(5): 673–687. DOI: 10.1006/jasc.1996.0064
- Newton, LS and Zarins, J. 2010. ‘Preliminary results of the Dhofar archaeological survey’. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 40: 247–266.
- Oonk, S, Slomp, CP and Huisman, DJ. 2009. ‘Geochemistry as an aid in archaeological prospection and site interpretation: current issues and research directions’. Archaeological Prospection, 16(1): 35–51. DOI: 10.1002/arp.344
- Palarea-Albaladejo, J and Martín-Fernández, JA. 2015. ‘zCompositions – R package for multivariate imputation of left-censored data under a compositional approach’. Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 143: 85–96. DOI: 10.1016/j.chemolab.2015.02.019
- Poggio, L and Gimona, A. 2017. ‘Assimilation of optical and radar remote sensing data in 3D mapping of soil properties over large areas’. Science of The Total Environment, 579: 1094–1110. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.11.078
- Qi, J, Chehbouni, A, Huete, AR, Kerr, YH and Sorooshian, S. 1994. ‘A modified soil adjusted vegetation index’. Remote Sensing of Environment, 48(2): 119–126. DOI: 10.1016/0034-4257(94)90134-1
- Ramadan, E, Al-Awadhi, T and Charabi, Y. 2021. ‘Land cover/land use change and climate change in Dhofar governorate, Oman’. International Journal of Geoinformatics, 17(4): 41–47. DOI: 10.52939/ijg.v17i4.1949
- Ramoelo, A, Skidmore, AK, Schlerf, M, Mathieu, R and Heitkönig, IMA. 2011. ‘Water-removed spectra increase the retrieval accuracy when estimating savanna grass nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations’. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 66(3): 408–417. DOI: 10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2011.01.008
- Rikimaru, A, Roy, PS and Miyatake, S. 2002. ‘Tropical forest cover density mapping’. Tropical Ecology, 43(1): 39–47.
- Rougeulle, A. 2008.
‘A medieval trade entrepôt at Khor Rori? The study of the Islamic ceramics from al-Hamr al-Sharqiya’ . In: Avanzini, A (ed.) A Port in Arabia between Rome and the Indian Ocean, 3rd c. BC-5th c. AD: Khor Rori Report 2, pp. 645–667. Arabia Antica 5. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider. - Rouse, JW, Haas, RH, Schell, JA and Deering, DW. 1974.
‘Monitoring vegetation systems in the Great Plains with ERTS’ . In: Third Earth Resources Technology Satellite-1 Symposium, Volume I, NASA SP-351, pp. 309–317. Washington, DC: NASA. - Seitsonen, O and Égüez, N. 2021. ‘Here be reindeer: geoarchaeological approaches to the transspecies lifeworlds of the Sámi reindeer herder camps on the tundra’. Iskos, 24: 124–145.
- Shahack-Gross, R, Marshall, F, Ryan, K and Weiner, S. 2004. ‘Reconstruction of spatial organization in abandoned Maasai settlements: implications for site structure in the pastoral Neolithic of East Africa’. Journal of Archaeological Science, 31(10): 1395–1411. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2004.03.003
- Steele, RE, Reinhardt, EG, Boyce, J, Gabriel, JJ and Vosmer, T. 2024. ‘Closure of Khor Al Balid and Khor Rori harbours/estuaries with coastal uplift and aridity in the 12th–15th c. CE and evidence for an extreme overwash event in the 18th–19th c. CE: implications for ancient port sites in southern Oman’. Marine Geology, 471:
107282 . DOI: 10.1016/j.margeo.2024.107282 - Stenberg, B, Viscarra Rossel, RA, Mouazen, AM and Wetterlind, J. 2010.
‘Visible and near infrared spectroscopy in soil science’ . In: Advances in Agronomy. Elsevier, pp. 163–215. DOI: 10.1016/S0065-2113(10)07005-7 - Thabeng, OL, Merlo, S and Adam, E. 2019. ‘High-resolution remote sensing and advanced classification techniques for the prospection of archaeological sites’ markers: the case of dung deposits in the Shashi-Limpopo confluence area (southern Africa)’. Journal of Archaeological Science, 102: 48–60. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2018.12.003
- Tigani ElMahi, A. 2001. ‘The traditional pastoral groups of Dhofar, Oman: a parallel for ancient cultural ecology’. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 31: 131–143.
- Tigani ElMahi, A. 2011a. ‘Hematophagous flies in Dhofar (Sultanate of Oman): a limiting factor and a potential pathogenic vector’. Journal of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, 16: 65–73. DOI: 10.24200/jams.vol16iss0pp65-73
- Tigani ElMahi, A. 2011b. ‘Old ways in a changing space: the issue of camel pastoralism in Dhofar’. Journal of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, 16: 51–64. DOI: 10.24200/jams.vol16iss0pp51-64
- Tolosana-Delgado, R and Mueller, U. 2021. Geostatistics for Compositional Data with R. Use R! Cham: Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-82568-3
- Tolosana-Delgado, R, Mueller, U and Van Den Boogaart, KG. 2019. ‘Geostatistics for compositional data: an overview’. Mathematical Geosciences, 51(4): 485–526. DOI: 10.1007/s11004-018-9769-3
- UNESCO. 2000. Land of Frankincense. Available at
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1010 [Last accessed 30 January 2026]. - Vermote, EF, Tanre, D, Deuze, JL, Herman, M and Morcette, J-J. 1997. ‘Second simulation of the satellite signal in the solar spectrum, 6S: an overview’. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 35(3): 675–686. DOI: 10.1109/36.581987
- Williams, KD, Steimer-Herbet, T, Gregoricka, LA, Saliège, J-F and McCorriston, J. 2014. ‘Bioarchaeological analyses of 3rd millennium BC high circular tower tombs in Dhofar, Oman’. Journal of Oman Studies, 12: 153–173.
- Williams, R, Taylor, G and Orr, C. 2020. ‘pXRF method development for elemental analysis of archaeological soil’. Archaeometry, 62(6): 1145–1163. DOI: 10.1111/arcm.12583
- Wilson, RT. 2013. ‘Py6S: a Python interface to the 6S radiative transfer model’. Computers and Geosciences, 51: 166–171. DOI: 10.1016/j.cageo.2012.08.002
- Wright, J. 2016. ‘Households without houses: mobility and moorings on the Eurasian steppe’. Journal of Anthropological Research, 72(2): 133–157. DOI: 10.1086/686297
- Youden, WJ. 1950. ‘Index for rating diagnostic tests’. Cancer, 3(1): 32–35. DOI: 10.1002/1097-0142(1950)3:1<;32::AID-CNCR2820030106>3.0.CO;2-3
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/jcaa.272 | Journal eISSN: 2514-8362
Language: English
Page range: 418 - 435
Submitted on: Feb 9, 2026
Accepted on: Sep 1, 2026
Published on: Oct 19, 2026
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Keywords:
© 2026 Antonios Koutroumpas, Silvia Lischi, Abel Ruiz-Giralt, Stefano Biagetti, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.