About

Joy McCorriston is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at The Ohio State University. She researches agricultural origins and development as well as paleoenvironmental conditions in the ancient Near East. Dr. McCorriston is also the Director of the Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA) Research Project, alongside Dr. Eric Oches and Dr. Abdalaziz Bin 'Aqil. Her work focuses on understanding the development of early agricultural systems and their environmental contexts in this region. She is actively involved in graduate education and research, contributing to the academic community through her expertise in archaeology, paleoecology, and environmental anthropology.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Engineering
• Biology
• Geology
• Political Science
• Paleontology
• Geography
• Management
• Oceanography
• Anatomy
• Archaeology
• Public relations
• Engineering ethics
• Environmental ethics
• History
• Ecology
• Physical geography
• Medicine

Selected publications

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

  PLoS ONE · 2025-05-28 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In arid regions across northern Africa, Asia and Arabia, ancient pastoralists constructed 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 identifies environmental and cultural factors that influenced variable placement and construction 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.

  PublisherDOI

• Oases of the world: Urgent call to save key archives for cultural and biological diversity

  npj Heritage Science · 2025-11-06

  articleOpen access

  Oases are key to humanity’s settlement in drylands in the past, today, and in the future. They form complex geo-bio-cultural systems of pivotal importance. Present climatic, economic, and social changes may lead to the demise of tangible and intangible values in and of oases, potentially affecting 500 million people. We aim at raising awareness of the accelerating threat to oases and argue for immediate action to protect this unique system.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Agricultural economies and provisioning relationships in medieval Armenia: an archaeobotanical analysis of Ambroyi village and Arai-Bazarjugh caravanserai

  Vegetation History and Archaeobotany · 2024-11-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Late Holocene hydrologic variability and ecosystem structure from rock hyrax middens in Dhofar, Oman

  Frontiers in Earth Science · 2024-09-16

  articleOpen access

  Over 1/3 of the Earth’s human population relies on dryland ecosystems for food and water resources. While these ecosystems are highly sensitive to changes in climate, we lack observational data as to how changes in hydrology influences plant communities. Paleoecological data for southern Arabia show woodland communities transitioned to more dry-adapted herbaceous plants, which suggests rainfall decreased across the Holocene. To assess relationships between hydrology and ecology, we employed leaf wax n -alkane distributions, δ 13 C wax , and δD wax records from rock hyrax ( Procavia capensis ) middens in Dhofar, Oman. The biomarker properties allowed reconstruction of changes in C3/C4 vegetation and local moisture availability, in tandem with community changes represented by a published pollen record. To constrain interpretations, n -alkane analyses were conducted on herbarium specimens of leaves collected in Dhofar. For the modern specimens, xeric plants typically contained longer homologues than mesic plants. Across the fossil middens (4,038–109 cal yrs BP), the proportions of plant-wax homologues do not show major changes, and thus do not suggest a shift between xeric versus mesic plants. Similarly, δ 13 C wax values indicate little or no change in the distributions of C3 and C4 vegetation. Limited δD wax data from the middens confirm overall drying occurred into the late Holocene, punctuated by a wetter pulse at ∼1.6 ka. Taken together, plant wax distributions and isotope data indicate changes in moisture availability across the late Holocene did not alter the structural composition of the plant communities and that the proportion of C3/C4 vegetation remained stable. We infer vegetation changes associated with late Holocene drying involved reshuffling of community composition and not major changes in vegetation structure. Additionally, this study demonstrates that leaf wax n -alkanes from rock hyrax middens provide a method to reconstruct changes in climate and vegetation in dryland ecosystems where other archives are scarce.

  PublisherDOI

• Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in the Archaeology of Dhofar

  Archaeopress Publishing Ltd eBooks · 2023-03-01 · 2 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  FIGURES 1.1.D001-001 with the Muḍayy springs in background le (photograph by T. Steimer-Herbet).1.2.D001-001 Individual A (' Awal).In this and all subsequent images, we masked human bone to provide illustration respecting the dead while showing the archaeological context of excavations (photograph by T. Steimer-Herbet and E. Lagan).1.3.D001-001 Commingled remains, including neonatal remains (photograph by T. Steimer-Herbet and E. Lagan).1.4.Sheikh Suha'il Al-Rujdi (le ) and an aide visit an HCT excavated by Drs.Tara Steimer and Kimberly Williams (both right) (photograph by M. Harrower).1.5.View of the springs at Muḍayy from D001-001 HCT (photograph by T. Steimer-Herbet).1.6.D001-001 HCT on plateau before excavation (photograph by J. McCorriston). 1.7.Diagram of a (tribal) segmentary lineage kinship system in which contingent and contextual a nity is measured by descent from common ancestors, usually through patrilineal lines.Triangles denote male descent; females not shown (image by K. Olson). 2.1.Image map of four major ecosystems in Dhofar: coastal plain, wooded escarpment, grassland plateau, and Nejd desert (image by by K. Olson). 2.2.Cloud forest of Terminalia dhofarica across the seaward-facing Dhofar escarpment (photograph by J. McCorriston). 2.3.Parkland of the Dhofar plateau with modern short grassland (photograph by J. McCorriston). 2.4.Native palms in the sandy channel of Wādī Dhahabūn (photograph by J. Everhart). 2.5.Travertine deposits, like speleothems, form with the evaporation of water that has seeped through limestone, carrying with it an oxygen proxy signal of temperature and a carbon signal of vegetation (photograph by J. McCorriston and K. Olson). Image map of enhancedEarly-Middle Holocene monsoon precipitation and paleolacs in Southern Arabia (precipitation data from Brown et al. 2018; Fordham et al. 2017) (image by K. Olson).2.7.Archaeological evidence of anthropogenic res can be seen embedded in sediment terraces in Yemen's highland deserts, an ecosystem comparable to the backslope of Dhofar's mountain plateau and near Nejd.No comparable sediment terraces exist in Dhofar to preserve such traces of former activity, but the tall grasslands themselves suggest a comparable antiquity to the practice of burning.Here the terrace surface has eroded to reveal a broad swath of grey ash and micro-charcoal, center (photograph by J. McCorriston).2.8.Cattle grazing short grassland on the Dhofar plateau (photograph by K. Pustovoytov and K. Olson).

  PublisherDOI

• Vegetation dynamics in Dhofar, Oman, from the Late Holocene to present inferred from rock hyrax middens

  Quaternary Research · 2023 · 7 citations

  • Geology
  • Ecology
  • Physical geography

  Abstract Arid regions are especially vulnerable to climate change and land use. More than one-third of Earth's population relies on these ecosystems. Modern observations lack the temporal depth to determine vegetation responses to climate and human activity, but paleoecological and archaeological records can be used to investigate these relationships. Decreasing rainfall across the Late Holocene provides a case study for vegetation response to changing hydroclimate. Rock hyrax ( Procavia capensis ) middens preserve paleoenvironmental indicators in arid environments where traditional archives are unavailable. Pollen from modern middens collected in Dhofar, Oman, demonstrates the reliability of this archive. Pollen, stable isotope (δ 13 C, δ 15 N), and microcharcoal data from fossil middens reveal changes in vegetation, relative moisture, and fire from 4000 cal yr BP to the present. Trees limited to moister areas (e.g., Terminalia ) today existed farther inland at ~3100 cal yr BP. After ~2900 cal yr BP, taxa with more xeric affiliations (e.g., Senegalia ) had increased. Coprophilous fungal spores ( Sporormiella ) and grazing indicator pollen revealed an amplified signal of domesticate grazing at ~1000 cal yr BP. This indicates that trees associated with semiarid environments were maintained in the interior desert during ~3000–4000 yr of decreasing rainfall and that impacts of human activity intensified after the transition to a drier environment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fire Shut Up in My Bones: The Opera 

  Journal of African American Studies · 2022-03-30

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• UNDERSTANDING DRIVERS OF VEGETATION CHANGE IN DHOFAR, OMAN: A BIODIVERSE DRYLAND ECOSYSTEM

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2022-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• COMPLEX INTERACTIONS BETWEEN PLANTS, PEOPLE, AND PRECIPITATION IN DHOFAR, OMAN FROM THE MID-HOLOCENE TO PRESENT

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2021-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Mitigating the potential contamination risk incurred in sampling herbarium specimens for phytolith reference collection

  Journal of Archaeological Science Reports · 2021-02-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• DHB-Origins and Development of Tribal Social Identities and Territorial Behaviors in Ancient Southern Arabia

  NSF · $756k · 2006–2012

• CNH-L: Pastoral Territory as a Dynamic Coupled System

  NSF · $1.6M · 2016–2022

• Collaborative Research: Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia and Mid-Holocene Environmental Changes

  NSF · $117k · 2002–2006

• Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Human Subsistance Practices And Environmental Change - A Botanical Analysis

  NSF · $18k · 2016–2019

Frequent coauthors

• Rémy Crassard

  Archéorient

  14 shared

• Michael J. Harrower

  11 shared

• Eric A. Oches

  Bentley University

  8 shared

• Sarah Ivory

  7 shared

• Louise Martin

  6 shared

• Michael D. Petraglia

  Smithsonian Institution

  4 shared

• Vincent Charpentier

  Archéologies et Sciences de l’Antiquité

  4 shared

• R. Scott Anderson

  4 shared