Africa–Arabia Hominin Dispersal GIS Dataset: Archaeological Sites and Spatial Evidence for Investigating Dispersal Pathways

The Africa–Arabia Hominin Dispersal GIS Dataset brings together archaeological site and spatial evidence compiled for GIS-based investigation of hominin and early human dispersal pathways across Africa, northeast Africa and Arabia. Dispersal is the unifying research question rather than any single species, period or destination. The dataset was developed to explore how geographically dispersed archaeological evidence could be assembled within GIS, compared across regions, and used to investigate alternative movement pathways and landscape constraints. Version 1 contains three components: Arabian Dispersal: 1,108 point records. African Dispersal: 156 point records. Africa–Arabia Dispersal Polygons: 14 archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence layers containing 37 polygon or multipolygon features. The Arabian Dispersal component intentionally extends beyond the modern Arabian Peninsula and includes relevant records from northeast Africa. This reflects the original research interest in alternative pathways connecting eastern Africa with Arabia and the Levant, including possible movement near the Bab al-Mandab, along Red Sea margins, and through more northerly Nile–Sinai connections. Point coordinates were obtained both from published geographic coordinates and, where these were unavailable, by georeferencing published maps or figures and digitising locality positions within GIS. Spatial precision therefore varies between records and is documented, where available, through the retained coordinate-source information. Version 1 is explicitly incomplete and is intended as an evolving spatial research resource rather than a comprehensive archaeological gazetteer or a definitive reconstruction of any single dispersal event. The historical compilation has not been subjected to a new record-by-record literature audit, systematic re-georeferencing, comprehensive updating, terminology normalisation, automatic deduplication or retrospective reinterpretation. Point data are supplied in Excel and CSV formats. Polygon evidence is supplied as a GeoPackage with a companion layer inventory. The accompanying README documents provenance, coordinate derivation, limitations and the scope of Version 1.