Near East Archaeology Vol 69 No 2

A AT VOL. 69 NO. 2 JUNE 2006 A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH

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VOLUME 69 NO. 2 ? JUNE 2006

C ^ The Pleistocene Peopling

^ I of Anatolia: Evidence from

Kaletepe Deresi

by Ludovic Slimak, Domase Mouralis, Nur

Balkan-Ath, Didier Binder, and Steven L. Kuhn

$'.. fe/JHK"fli Anatolia has been called the

HE?hal^HPîfll crossroads of Eurasia, forming as

^^BiffPlH^Xi? yt c'oes a land-bridge between

^H||QK^^ 3 Europe, the Levant, and central

^^^^^^^^^^^B 2 Asia. Historical documents and

^^^^^^^^^^H ^ the region's rich archaeological

^^^^^^^^^^H ^" record provide ample testimony to

^^^^^^^^^^H 1 frequent movements of people, ideas,

^^^^^^^^^^^k and goods across Anatolia over

^^^^^^^^^BjPL^ tne ̂ ast few millennia. A range of

^^^^^^^^^^. M& evidence, both circumstantial and

direct, suggests that humans and human ancestors repeatedly

traversed the region in even more remote times.

/? 4 Late Acheulian Variability " I in the Southern Levant: A Contrast of the Western and Eastern

Margins of the Levantine Corridor

by Gary O. Rollefson, Leslie A. Quintero, and

Philip J.Wilhe

A(^ -<W^ One of the fascinating

^JI^Bto?:Jflfl^^k aspects of the archaeology

^^^^^H?^^^^^^H.. of verY ancient times is

j^^^^^^HH^^^^^^Bi that it offers glimpses of

^^^^^ÊKj^^^^^K*' extinct life ways. We find

ij^^^^^HH^^^^^Hpf? this particularly true for " ^^Bfmm^SS?^Kfl^l-

; ' the cultural behavior of hominids during the

Lower Palaeolithic. Interestingly, relatively little is known

about the daily habits of people during the fairly well-studied

period of the Acheulian in the Levant, in spite of numerous site

discoveries of considerable note. Much of this deficiency results

from a lack of preserved perishable goods; these seldom survive

time depths in the hundreds of thousands to well over a million

years. But also lacking is clear understanding of the behavioral

significance of those objects that do survive the wear and tear of

time, specifically the numerous stone artifacts. This article presents

new research that assists our quest for understanding of these

ancient lives.

Human Evolution at the

Crossroads: An Archaeological

Survey in Northwest Jordan

by Michael S. Bisson, April Nowell, Carlos Cordova,

Regina Kalchgruber, and Maysoon al-Nahar

Human evolution can be traced back 7,000,000 years. Modern

humans evolved in Africa 160,000 years ago and as recently as 26,000 years ago we shared parts of the world with at least one other species?the Neanderthals. Since the discovery of the first Neanderthal in 1856 in Germany, this species has

generated controversy; specifically, there are questions concerning

their genetic relationship to modern humans, their capacity for language and artistic expression, or the reasons for their

extinction. Resolving these debates in the long term depends on

an accumulation of evidence for how Neanderthals adapted to the

physical and cultural environments around them. In other words, in order to understand why they died, we need to first understand

how they lived.

73

On the Cover: WZM-1, "The Sinkhole located in Northwest Jordan with lithics from the Middle Paleolithic/' Photo by Regina Kalchgruber.

Shelter or Hunting Camp?

Anatomy of a Cave Site

by Bruce Schroeder

Paleolithic archaeologists frequently overlook

explanations of site location in their concentration on

site chronology and artifact assemblages. The issue of

why a particular location was chosen for occupation

forced its way into my consciousness while working

at the site of Jerf al-Ajla, a cave located in the desert

of central Syria. The lack of water in the vicinity was

evident as I watched while the younger of the two

wives of the Bedouin family camped in front of the cave

clambered up the sloping rock surface of Jebel M'qeittaa, the ridge in which the cave was located. With a huge

bag on her back, she was searching for water that, after

a fall rain, was captured in pockets of Jebel M'qeittaa. The pockets were typically filled with wind blown debris

along with the detritus of passing flocks. This raised a question of not just why the site was occupied at all

but why it was visited for tens and indeed hundreds of

thousands of years, albeit irregularly.

87 DEPARTMENTS

ARTI-FACTS

Petra: Lost City of Stone

Kevin McGeough

REVIEWS

Chieftains of the Highland Clans. A History of Israel in the 12th and

11th Centuries b.c.

(William G. Dever)

Democracy's Ancient Ancestors: Mari

and Early Collective Governance (Matthew T Rutz)

inn FORUM

The Destruction of Palestinian

Archaeological Heritage: Saffa

Village as a Model

by Salah H. al-Houdalieh

Roa^^^^^ljoac^^^^^^^ît^^^^^^^Line

97

99

i S? ? A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH

? M A N E Y

p u h i i s h i n g

PALESTINE EXPLORATION

QUARTERLY

Palestine Exploration Quarterly (PEQ) is the journal of the Palestine

Exploration Fund, which was established in 1865 as the first scholarly society dedicated to the scientific study of what was then generally known as the Holy Land. In 1869 the Fund, through its Palestine

Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, aimed to illuminate the Bible for its readers with scholarly information about the land of the Bible.

PEQ is the Statement's successor and while it remains true to its

original brief, it has greatly widened its scope. In spite of its historical

title, PEQ is concerned not just with Palestine/the land of Israel, but with the wider region of the Levant ? its history, archaeology

(including biblical aspects), art, languages, natural and earth

ethnology, geography, natural and earth sciences.

PEQ

AUtSTIVR KXPi.OKAI'lOK'Q.UAk'l'liiL?.Y

?

<&

CALL FOR PAPERS Contributions should be sent to the Editor: Professor J RBartlett, 102 Sorrento Road, Dalkey, Co. Dublin,

Republic of Ireland

Books for review should be sent to: Ashley Jones, Palestine

Exploration Fund, 2 Hinde Mews, Marylebone Lane, London W1U2AA, UK

To view the full Notes for Contributors please visit

www.maneyxo.uk/journals/notes/peq

View free sample content online at

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EDITOR Professor J R Bartlett

Trinity College Dublin,

Republic of Ireland

REVIEWS EDITOR Ashley Jones Palestine Exploration Fund, UK

3 issues per year Print ISSN: 0031-0328

Online ISSN: 1743-1301

For further information please contact:

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Or

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For further information or to subscribe online please visit:

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From the Editor

With thanks due to guest editor April Nowell of the University of Victoria,

this issue touches on time periods that have not been covered frequently in these pages. Although I now teach Biblical Archaeology, my original

fieldwork was on the prehistory of Jordan so I find it particularly gratifying

to be able to present these articles covering Anatolia, Jordan, and the

Levantine corridor over a chronological span of several million years. Over

the past decade Near Eastern Archaeology has come to represent the broad

range of interests of our subscribers by encompassing material that is outside

of the usual fields suggested by our title. We have endeavored to expand our

horizons both chronologically and geographically and hope to continue this

practice into the future.

At the same time, with our Forum section, we have tried to present diverse

views on the practice of archaeology in today's world. In this issue, Salah H.

al-Houdalieh of Al-Quds University discusses the problems of Palestinian

Heritage Management in recognition of current, sometimes bleak, realities

of the Middle East. It is perhaps a surprising development for a discipline not

always known for timely debates that happenings in our field are engaging

the interests of the media more and more. While some of us may find

that the amount of attention accorded to the region can make our work

more exciting, we also have to deal with the sobering realization that the

dangers to lives and to cultural heritage resulting from political instability are

considerable.

These insights provide for an interesting foray into both the far distant

past and the discordant present.

Sandra A, Scham Editor

Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation

June I 2007

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.NEAR EASTERN

A^CHAEOIOGY Editor Sandra A. Scham

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VTrV

The Pleistocene Peopling of Anatolia:

Evidence from Kaletepe Deresi

by Ludovic Slimak, Damase Mouralis, Nur Balkan*Ath, Didier Binder, and Steven L* Kuhn

A range of evidence indicates that early humans were

present in and around Anatolia throughout the

Pleistocene epoch (see sidebar). Nonetheless, the

existing archaeological record for this period in Anatolia

is remarkably sparse. There are many reports of Lower

Paleolithic artifacts from across Turkey (Harmankaya and

Tamndi 1996), but many of the points on the map below

represent artifacts collected from surface contexts, and

few have been field checked and verified. To date, Lower

Paleolithic archaeological remains have been recovered

from primary geological contexts at only a small handful

of localities within Turkey. The two best known sites with

Lower Paleolithic layers are Karain Cave (situated near

Antalya), and Yanmburgaz Cave (located not far from

Istanbul). Both cave sites are situated at comparatively low

elevations not far from the present-day seacoast. With one

exception (Giile? et al. 1999), the high plateau of central

Anatolia has remained a virtual blank spot on the map of

the Lower Paleolithic, raising questions about when (or if) the region was occupied during the earlier phases of the

Paleolithic. The research at Kaletepe Deresi 3 reported here should help to resolve some of these questions.

\Qrontes R.

Mediterranean Sea

Syria

Beirut/

Iraq

Turkey Lower Paleolithic Sites 0 100 200km

Map of Turkey, showing reported Lower Paleolithic occurrences (from Harmankaya and Tanindi 1996). Small dots indicate surface finds or unverified

sites. Stars indicate investigated sites with in situ Lower Paleolithic. 1 Dursunlu; 2* Yanmburgaz Cave; 3= Karain Cave; 4= Kaletepe Deresi 3.

NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 69:2 (2006) 51

H^HB^^HhI^^^rk^9BI m j???gHH?^^^Hh?%% - JHI

ite ' - "

i> ' "

-^"SSa^^ yfP9Bl?:Jsl^^^ lllHkyii^^BII^R^Îi?^SHK'%' *;' aHSI^^^^^^^Î^H

Volcanic terrain typical of the Central Anatolian Volcanic Province. Unless otherwise noted, all photos and illustrations in this article are

courtesy of the authors.

Several factors contribute to the scarcity of early Paleolithic

remains in Turkey and on the central Anatolian plateau in

particular. One of the most important of these is the simple

difficulty of finding very old sites. Large sites dating to the last

few millennia are often quite easy to locate, either by virtue

of standing architecture or because they form large, mounded

tells or h?y?ks that project above the surrounding landscapes. In contrast, Paleolithic sites tend to be unobtrusive. Consisting

of thin scatters of stone tools, animal bones, ash lenses, and

other ephemeral traces of human presence, Paleolithic sites are

easily obscured by thin layers of sediment cover. The only way to systematically discover early sites is to search for "old dirt,"

sedimentary layers of the correct age to contain Paleolithic

remains. One obvious place to look for old dirt is in caves, and indeed most of the known Paleolithic sites in Turkey are

associated with such karstic features. Unfortunately, interior

Anatolia contains few caves. Pleistocene deposits that may have existed in the broad inland basins of the central plateau

are often either deeply buried or else have been eroded away,

exposing underlying rocks too ancient to contain traces of

hominins (humans and their closest ancestors)?but often

with a record of much earlier Miocene primates (Alpagut et al.

1990; Begun 2005: 54; Sevim et al. 2001). Lower and Middle Paleolithic remains have been recovered

from secure geological contexts at only two sites on the

Anatolian plateau. One of these is Dursunlu (Konya) (Gule? et al. 1999), where a small sample of stone artifacts and a

large collection of animal remains have been recovered from a deeply-buried layer that formed sometime between 780,000 and 990,000 years ago. The other is Kaletepe Deresi 3 (KD3)

(Nigde), the subject of this article (Slimak et al. 2004, 2005). This site presents one of the most complete early Paleolithic

sequences in Turkey. The stratigraphie sequence at the site,

more than 7 m deep, contains multiple archaeological horizons

attesting to presence of early humans in central Anatolia during both the Lower and Middle Paleolithic.

52 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 69:2 (2006)

Continuous "carpet" of obsidian debris in the Kaletepe/K?m?rc? obsidian source area.

Context of KD3 The KD3 locality is situated in a part of central Turkey

with unusually high potential to yield Paleolithic remains.

The Central Anatolian Volcanic Province (CAVP), which

includes the area better known as Cappadocia, is a particularly

promising place to prospect for "old dirt" and old sites. Here

there are extensive Pliocene and Pleistocene volcanic deposits,

coming from some of the same volcanic systems that produced the spectacular rock formations for which Cappadocia is

famous. Because the soft volcanic tuffs produced by many of

the CAVP volcanoes erode easily, many of the older layers are

exposed rather than remaining deeply buried. Other products of the volcanoes, rocks such as obsidian and basalt, were used

for making stone tools throughout prehistory. The natural

abundance of these desirable raw materials would have helped attract early humans to the region.

The KD3 site is located in the southern part of the CAVR on the edge of the G?ll? Dag volcanic complex, not far from

the town of ?iftlik. The G?ll? Dag complex includes several

distinct obsidian sources that were exploited prehistorically

(Cauvin 1996; Cauvin and Balkan-Ath 1996; Chataigner et

al. 1998). Obsidian from one of these, the Kaletepe/K?m?rc? source, was widely traded throughout the eastern

Mediterranean region during the Neolithic period. The

Kaletepe/K?m?rc? source today is marked by an almost

continuous carpet of debris from obsidian working that extends

over several hectares across the lower slopes of the volcano.

N. Balkan-Ath (Istanbul University) and D. Binder (CNRS,

France) conducted a detailed study of Neolithic workshops situated on top of the Kaletepe/K?m?rc? source (Balkan-Atli

et al. 1999; Binder and Balkan-Atli 2001). The Paleolithic

deposits at KD3 were first discovered in the course of the

Neolithic project. The first test excavations at KD3 took

place in 2000, and the site has been excavated every summer

since that date by a team of French, Turkish, and American

researchers (Slimak et al. 2004, 2005). The site is situated on the south bank of a seasonal stream

bed (dere) near the southeastern edge of the main exposures of

K?m?rc? obsidian. It was originally identified by L. Slimak based

on the presence of artifacts and bone eroding out of the steep bank. The Pleistocene deposits have been exposed in two stepped trenches (called "locus Amont" and "locus Aval") approximately 15 sq m in size. The archaeological horizons are contained

within a series of alluvial and colluvial deposits that are made up

mainly of reworked pumice and volcanic tephra along with larger chunks of rhyolite, and?site, and obsidian. For the most part the

sediments are quite fine grained. The exception occurs in the

lower part of the sequence, where there is a thick layer of large,

angular and?site blocks (corresponding with archaeological level

IV). These blocks appear to have come from the collapse of a cliff

face or small bedrock overhang nearby. We are currently able to establish only the maximum and

minimum ages of the KD3 stratigraphie sequence. A series

of six thin volcanic ash layers is found near the top of the

sequence, between archaeological levels Y and II. These tephras have been traced to an eruption at the nearby Acig?l volcanic

complex dated to around 160,000 years ago (Druitt et al. 1995;

Kuzucuoglu et al. 1998; Mouralis 2003). At the other end of the sequence, the entire stratigraphie

column sits on a basal layer of extrusive volcanic rocks that


Overview of KD3 excavation area: "Aval" excavation area is to left, "Amont" area to right.

formed between 1.1 and 1.3 million years ago (Bigazzi et al.

1993; Mouralis et al. 2002; Mouralis 2003). Based on these

age determinations it appears that the sequence at KD3 could

represent as much as one million years of human occupation.

However, it is unlikely that sedimentary layers representing the entire time span have been preserved. We do not know

how much time elapsed between the formation of the bedrock

and the deposition of the earliest archaeological levels and

there are likely significant gaps in sedimentation. Nonetheless, the archaeological sequence at KD3 is unique within Turkey both for its age and for the variety of Paleolithic materials

represented in it.

A Summary of Stone Artifacts from

Kaletepe Deresi 3 The archaeological levels at KD3 consist mainly of dispersed

accumulations of stone artifacts and occasionally other

material. The 14 archaeological levels should be considered as

representing episodes of more-or-less intense hominin presence

in the area, separated by periods when few or no artifacts were

being deposited. The finds consist almost exclusively of flaked stone artifacts, totalling nearly 5,000 specimens as of the end

of 2006. Unfortunately, bone is extremely scarce in the deposits at KD3. To date, the only identifiable faunal remains consist

of a mandible and isolated teeth of a primitive equid coming

from level II (just below the volcanic tephra). The scarcity of

bone is probably due to mainly the acidic nature of the volcanic

sediments at KD3. However, if the main activities conducted at the site centered on the extraction and working of stone for

tools, there may never have been much bone deposited in the

first place. The 14 archaeological levels at KD3 can be divided into

three basic phases, based on the kinds of artifacts present within them. These are described below, from youngest (phase III, found closest to the surface) to oldest (phase I, the deepest levels in the cave). Phase III, the most recent, includes levels

I, F, and II. Levels V and II are separated by the 160,000

year-old tephra layers. These three layers represent a classic

Middle Paleolithic or Mousterian occupation. Their lithic

assemblages are characterized by well-made retouched points and sidescrapers. Several variants of the Levallois method of

flake production, typical of the Eurasian Middle Paleolithic, are represented. Almost all of the artifacts in these levels are made of obsidian. Although most of the debris recovered

resulted from the production of artifacts, several well-used

"finished" tools are present. These may represent "retooling"

activities, wherein worn-out implements were replaced with

Photograph of locus "Amont" section in KD3. The accumulation

of large blocks near the bottom of the section corresponds with

archaeological level IV.


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o Sem

Levallois core and retouched Mousterian point from Level II at KD3.

Flake cleaver (and?site) and bifacial handaxe (obsidian) from Levels V and VI at KD3.


new ones made on the spot. Alternatively, this locality may

have been more than just a place to extract obsidian, and a

range of other activities may have taken place there.

The middle Phase II is comprised of levels IF and III. Cultural remains are quite diffusely distributed in these levels. Artifacts

include irregular scrapers and notched and denticulated tools.

In level III, these tools are manufactured on thick flakes with

large, flat striking platforms, whereas in level IF blanks were

produced using the discoid method. As in the overlying levels, obsidian was the main raw material exploited. The assemblage from level IF bears some similarity to assemblages of stone

artifacts from two coastal Lower Paleolithic sites, Yanmburgaz Cave (Turkish Thrace) and Karain F (assemblage A at Antalya)

(Kuhn et al. 1996; Stiner et al. 1996; Yal?inkaya et al. 1992; Otte et al. 1998). It represents either a late manifestation of

the Lower Paleolithic or an early kind of Middle Paleolithic

industry. Layer III has yielded a number of obsidian flakes of a

form typically produced during thinning of large bifaces using antler or hardwood hammers. For this reason we believe that it

represents a variety of late Acheulean industry.

Phase I, the earliest phase of occupation at KD3, consists

of levels IV through XII. Level IV corresponds with the

accumulation of large blocks; level V consists of finer-grained sediments beneath the block layer. Levels VI-XII are very thin layers, resembling individual depositional events. The

artifact assemblages from these levels show a wide range of

technological and economic behaviors associated with the

Large and?site core from Level IV at KD3.

Anatolia?A Pleistocene Crossroads Anatolia has been called the crossroads of Eurasia,

forming as it does a land-bridge between Europe, the

Levant, and central Asia. Historical documents and

the regions rich archaeological record provide ample

testimony to frequent movements of people, ideas, and

goods across Anatolia over the last few millennia.

A range of evidence, both circumstantial and

direct, suggests that humans and human ancestors

repeatedly traversed the region in even more remote

times. Hominins (humans and their closest ancestors)

first began to colonize territories outside of their

evolutionary heartland in sub-Saharan Africa at the

very beginning of the Pleistocene geological epoch, around L8 million years ago (Ant?n and Swisher

2004; Dennell and Roebroeks 2005:1099). Dmanisi,

currently the earliest-known hominin site outside of

Africa and dating to between 1.7 and 1.8 million

years before present (Gabunia et al 2000; Vekua et

al 2002), is located in southwestern Georgia, a short

distance north of the Turkish border. The most likely routes of migration there from the African Rift Valley

pass directly through eastern Anatolia.

In a somewhat more recent time frame, genetic

reconstructions of the dispersal of Homo sapiens

show early modern humans passing through

Anatolia en route between Africa, Europe, and

Asia after 60,000 years ago. Interestingly, human

mitochondria! DNA (passed on in the female line

only) shows clearer evidence for the expansion of

Homo sapiens through Anatolia than does the Y

chromosome (which tracks male descent) (Richards et al 2000; Oppenheimer 2003: 86; Cinnioglu et

al 2004)- These data do not imply that males and

females dispersed by different routes: instead, they

likely reflect the chance local extinction of some of the older Y-chromosome lines. And these are just

the first and the most recent dispersal events: there

is every reason to expect that hominins moved

between Africa and Eurasia at other times during

the Pleistocene.


exploitation of both obsidian and course-grained volcanic

rocks such as rhyolite, and?site, and basalt. Two major

technological modes are represented within Phase I.

Level IV contains evidence for the production of very large flakes from large and?site and rhyolite cores, some larger than

20 cm in diameter. "Formal" tools in level IV are primarily

heavy choppers and chopping tools and some flakes with

minimal retouch. A few fragments of roughly-made bifacial

artifacts are also present. More than 90 percent of artifacts are manufactured of rhyolite and and?site: obsidian, though

locally available, was seldom used.

Levels V and VI-XII at the bottom of the sequence are

very different. They include bifacial handaxes of obsidian as well as cleavers. The large tools are manufactured

from both and?site and obsidian: the latter seems to have

been especially favored for making bifacial tools. Level V

is also rich in and?site polyhedrons, which may represent

another, independent technological trajectory aimed at the

production of small flakes.

The assemblages from level V and VI-XII are clearly a local

expression of the Acheulean. The assemblage from layer IV

is less easily characterized. It could represent raw material

procurement activities oriented around the production of

large flakes destined to become handaxes and cleavers, or

it could represent a novel Lower Paleolithic technological faci?s for the region. Only further excavation expanding the

collections and the area excavated will resolve this question.

Potential Significance and Future Work at

Kaletepe Deresi 3 As analyses of the materials recovered mature and more

absolute dates become available, KD3 promises to shed new light on the movement of populations and technological innovations

between the Near East and Europe during the Pleistocene.

Already, the site is unique within Turkey as the only location

where an Acheulean assemblage with handaxes and cleavers

has been excavated from undisturbed sedimentary layers.

Handaxes are widely known from open-air sites, particularly

along the major river courses, but before the excavations at

KD3 no Acheulean assemblage had been found in a sealed,

potentially datable geological context.

From the dates of the underlying bedrock, it appears that

deposits at KD3 are insufficiently old to provide evidence

for the initial human entry into Anatolia, which probably occurred more than 1.8 million years ago. The upper part of

the sequence seems to have been truncated sometime soon

after as eruption of the Acig?l volcano some 160,000 years

ago, and so is probably too early to contain evidence for the

dispersal of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Nonetheless, KD3 may contain evidence for another dispersal event of

intermediate age. Some researchers argue that the appearance

of developed Acheulean industries with well-made handaxes

and cleavers in Eurasia represents a discrete hominin dispersal

out of Africa. Striking similarities between Acheulean

assemblages from the site of Gesher Benot Yacov (GBY), in

the Jordan Valley of Israel, and materials from East Africa

lend further support to this hypothesis of a second major

dispersal event (Carbonell et al. 1999; Goren-Inbar et al.

2000). The site of KD3 certainly has something to contribute to evaluating this hypothesis. The artifacts from levels V and

VI-XII are reminiscent of some of the artifacts from Gesher

Benot Yacov (Goren-Inbar et al. 2000; Saragusti and Goren

Inbar 2001). However, if the ages of the earliest layers at KD3

approach the age of the underlying bedrock (dated to more

than 1.1 million years ago), they would be older even than

Gesher Benot Yacov. Only additional Chronometrie research

will permit us to say more about the ages of the levels between

bedrock and the tuff at the top of the KD3 sequence. Efforts are currently underway to correlate different volcanic tuffs

and pumices in the KD3 sedimentary sequence with specific volcanic eruptions in the region.

Although sediments corresponding to the earliest and most

recent hominin dispersal events seem to be absent in the

stratigraphie sequence at the KD3 locality, the G?ll? Dag area presents many possibilities for investigating these time

periods. Middle Paleolithic Levallois flakes and cores as well as handaxes are found on the surface throughout the lower

slopes of the volcano. In some locations, the artifacts appear

to be eroding out of intact sedimentary layers. In future years

we hope to investigate the most promising of these localities

in an effort to extend the local Paleolithic sequence into both

earlier and later periods.

Another question that develops from work at KD3 is

"where did the obsidian go?" Obsidian from the G?ll? Dag was exchanged throughout the eastern Mediterranean as

early as the Aceramic Neolithic period. However, obsidian

artifacts are simply unknown in Lower and Middle Paleolithic

assemblages outside of the CAVP. Of course the best

documented Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites (Karain and

Yanmburgaz caves) are hundreds of kilometers away, and it is

not surprising that the obsidian never reached these distant

localities. Still, we know little of how Lower and Middle

Paleolithic humans might have utilized the raw materials they collected at Kaletepe within the more immediate area. Any information we can obtain from future studies of Paleolithic

sites in the surrounding area about transport and exploitation of K?m?rc? obsidian will be invaluable in understanding

ranging patterns and territory sizes of Paleolithic populations in central Anatolia.

KD3 and other Paleolithic localities in the surrounding area may also contribute to answering another important

question about colonization of the globe by early human

ancestors. KD3 is situated at an elevation of 1,600 m above sea level, at a latitude equivalent to Boston, Massachusetts.

Even in the current interglacial, the area is characterized by very cold, windy winters: conditions would have been even

more forbidding during colder glacial intervals within the


Pleistocene. This is a very different kind of environment from

the tropical and subtropical climes in which hominins first

evolved. We really don't know when hominids first evolved

the capacity to cope with long winters and sub-freezing

temperatures, when plant foods would have been unavailable.

In the long run, such ecological barriers would have been

far more significant than sheer distance in channeling early hominin dispersals. Additional chronological information

from KD3 will enable us to correlate the various occupation horizons with the record of global climate change during the

Pleistocene: it will be of particular interest to know whether

the early occupations correlate with warm or cold intervals.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ludovic Slimak is a researcher at CNRS in Aix-en

Provence (France). He has conducted research on the

Paleolithic in France, Ethiopia and Djibouti, among other

places. He discovered the KD3 Paleolithic locality and has

directed excavations there since their inception in 2000.

Damase Mouralis is a Maitre de conf?rences at the

Universitu of Rouen . His research focuses on Quaternary

environments in Anatolia, volcanic stratigraphy and

chronology, and the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.

Nur Balkan-Ath is Professor in the department of \ Prehistory at Istanbul University (Turkey). She is a

noted specialist in the study of the Neolithic and obsidian i exploitation in Anatolia. She is co-director of research on the

Neolithic obsidian workshops at Kaletepe and has overseen

; the Paleolithic project as well.

Didier Binder is director of the CNRS prehistoric archaeology

laboratory in Valbonne (France). He has conducted excavations

\ of Neolithic sites in France, Turkey and elsewhere. He is head

of the French scientific mission conducting research on the

I Neolithic obsidian workshops of the G?ll? Dag area and helped \ to sponsor the Paleolithic project

Steven Kuhn is Professor of Anthropology at the

University of Arizona (USA). He has conducted research

\ on the Paleolithic in several parts of the eastern and northern

Mediterranean basin. His current work focuses mainly on the

Pleistocene prehistory of Turkey.


Late Acheulian Variability in the Southern Levant: A Contrast of the Western and

Eastern Margins of the Levantine Corridor

by Gary O. Rollefson, Leslie A, Quintero, and Philip J. Wilke

One of the fascinating aspects of the archaeology of very ancient times is that it offers glimpses of

extinct life ways. We find this particularly true for

the cultural behavior of hominids during the Lower Palaeo

lithic. Interestingly relatively little is known about the daily habits of people during the fairly well-studied period of the

Acheulian in the Levant in spite of numerous discoveries of

significant sites. Much of this deficiency results from a lack of

preserved perishable goods; these seldom survive time depths of hundreds of thousands to well over a million years. But also

lacking is clear understanding of the behavioral significance

of those objects that do survive the wear and tear of time,

specifically the numerous stone artifacts. Thus, it has been

difficult to gain a clear sense of fairly mundane topics such

as how hominids subsisted in diverse regions with varied

resources and challenges to daily living. We present here

some new research that assists our quest for understanding these ancient lives. Specifically we look at a major tool in

Acheulian site assemblages, the cleaver or butchery knife, and discuss how this tool reveals behavioral choices and

regional differences in Lower Palaeolithic lifeways in western

and eastern regions of the Levant.

^f^V^Jp?j

**.

WC^-s**-*^ ?L

/,...

"i:^T?

Map of the southern Levant showing the location of Tabun Cave (Israel) and 'Ain Soda (Jordan) (adapted from the Roadmap of the Hashemtte Kingdom of Jordan. Royal Jordanian Geographic Centre, 1989).

Background In 1997, we conducted exca

vations on the banks of Ain Soda, a

pool in the marshland of the Azraq Oasis in eastern Jordan, along the

shore of what was once a large

Pleistocene lake. Analysis of the

bifaces (colloquially, "handaxes") from the Late Acheulian layers revealed an unprecedented

proportion of a particular type called bifacial tranchet cleavers

that exceed 90 percent of the

bifaces in the tool assemblages

(Quintero et al. 2004: 3). Similarly

high percentages of tranchet

cleavers occur in the assemblages

from a number of sites that two of us

(Quintero and Wilke) discovered

in the abjafr Basin of southern

Jordan (Rollefson et al. 2005;

Quintero et al. n.d.). Suspecting

that these high cleaver percentages

might be a feature characteristic of

the eastern steppe of Jordan?the

eastern margin of the Levantine

Corridor?we decided to test the case by re-examining the biface

sample that one of us had studied

from Tabun Cave, located in the

western Levant on the coast

of Israel, some 25 years earlier

(Rollefson 1978).


Aerial photo of the remnants of what was the western shore of a Pleistocene lake in eastern Jordan at South Azraq. 'Ain Soda is at the left of

the photo (red circle). Photo courtesy of the authors.

Trench 2 at 'Ain Soda, showing a pavement of artifacts, many of which are bifacial cleavers. (Photo: L. Quintero)


Excavations in Trench 4 at 'Ain Soda. This silt dune produced substantial numbers of bifacial cleavers and Levallois points. (Photo: L. Quintero)

*W'

A bifacial cleaver from 'Ain Soda. Notice the razor-sharp cutting edge at the distal end of the piece. (Photo: G. Rollefson)

i,yp*k 2**

,,^^H^'..

The Wadi Mughara (Nahal Me'arot) in Mount Carmel, south of Haifa.

Tabun Cave is at the far right of the photo. (Photo: G. Rollefson) Close-up of the entrance to Tabun Cave. (Photo: G. Rollefson)


A Brief History of the Carmel Caves The Carmel caves are located on the western slopes

of Mount Carmel about 20 km from the city of Haifa and near the place where the Valley of the Caves segues into the Coastal Plain. Dorothy Garrod famously excavated the Carmel Caves of el-Wad, et-Tabun,

and es-Skhul in the 1930s. Nether excavations have

been conducted there, however, from the late 1960s

onward. Burials of two Middle Palaeolithic human

types (Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans) have been found there. The significance of the Mount

Carmel caves for the study of human evolution within

the framework is unparalleled. Et-Tabun Cave (the Cave of the Oven) was

occupied during the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic

ages (half a million to some 40,000 years ago). Up to 25 m of sand, silt, and clay accumulated in the

cave. Deposits of sea sand and pollen examined at

the site suggest a warm climate durfhg the time of its occupation, when the sea of the Mediterranean

had risen due to melting glaciers. The coastal plain was narrower than it is today and was covered with

savannah vegetation. Clay and silt in the upper levels of et-Tabun Cave indicate that a more humid

climate prevailed when glaciers formed again and the Mediterranean Sea dropped to its present level.

In 2003, we re-analyzed 1,126 bifaces from the excavations

undertaken by Arthur Jelinek at Tabun in the 1967-?972 seasons. We used a new method of analysis developed by two

of us (Wilke and Quintero) that pays particular attention to technological aspects of biface production and use-life

(including changes in tool form that resulted from tranchet flake removals during subsequent resharpening episodes that

ultimately led to tool exhaustion and discard or to re-use of these tools as flake cores). Two features of the Tabun bifaces

were immediately clear. First, bifacial cleavers were severely

underreported in the 1978 analysis as a consequence of using

Fran?ois Bordes' (1961) biface typology, which defines biface

types using an inconsistent mix of morphology, technology, and

biface refinements. Using our new technological analysis, we

found the representation of cleavers exceeded 70 percent of the biface assemblage. So, in one important way, the Tabun biface

assemblage is not so very different from those recently found in the eastern Levant. Our second notable finding was that bifaces in the Tabun assemblage are significantly smaller than those

from Ain Soda. We consider here possible explanations for these and other phenomena and their importance to regional interpretations of hominid behavior.

The Samples The sample from Ain Soda (n

= 284) consists of metrically

complete bifaces (i.e., damage to specimens did not affect

metrical attributes) from excavated deposits in two of the

four trenches exposed in 1997. These bifaces derive from Ain Soda's Late Acheulian occupation. The sediments at

Tabun produced bifaces from 10 of the 14 depositional units

(in 25 of the 86 geological beds) identified by Jelinek (1982).

Although our analysis included all of the bifaces from these

units, some of the geological units are completely or partially

assigned to Levantine Mousterian phases (Tabun C and

D), and we have limited our sample for this paper to the

artifacts that came from Units 11, 12, and 13 (all assigned to the Mugharan Tradition by Jelinek, which includes Late

Acheulian [or "Acheuleo-Yabrudian"], Yabrudian, and

Amudian industries) and Unit 14, containing only Late

Acheulian artifacts. The number of metrically complete bifaces from these subassemblages totals 844 specimens (Unit 11, n =

426; Unit 12, n - 179; Unit 13, n = 127; and

Unit 14, n= 112).

Influences on Assemblage Character Site Function

McCown (1961) demonstrated in early work that the

changes in the use of Tabun Cave through time influenced the character of the stone tools and faunal material in Layer

B, as compared with the lower deposits of greater antiquity. It is likely that the very long stratigraphie record of Tabun

Cave documents a complicated and diverse set of adaptations as the local environment fluctuated over time. Concerning

faunal remains, the Tabun sediments produced a rich list

of species (Bate 1937), although most of the microfauna

and some of the remains of larger animals probably were

introduced into the cave by predators and raptors. Yet, it is

clear that the occupants of the cave exploited a wide range

of woodland- and riparian-adapted fauna.

The faunal history at Ain Soda is not as rich, perhaps because it was an exposed, open-air site with more limited

occupation. Also, salts in the silt dunes at the edges of the

pool/marsh may have been detrimental to bone preservation. Nevertheless, teeth of rhinoceros, elephant, various

equids, wild cattle, and giant camel were recovered from

Late Acheulian deposits, so it is clear that steppe-adapted

megafauna were preyed upon and butchered on the margins

of the lake. This exploitation pattern is echoed at the nearby Acheulian site of C-Spring (Clutton-Brock 1989). In spite of

the dissimilar environments, hunting of large game appears

to have been a major activity in both regions. The larger faunal inventory at Tabun, however, suggests a broader range

of exploitation. The differences in site character are reflected in the tool

assemblages as well. The broad range of flake tools at Tabun

(the ratio of flake tools to bifaces is roughly 9:1) suggests a

domestic setting in which diverse activities were carried out.


Ain Soda, on the other hand, appears to have been

more exclusively a butchering site, with a dramatically different ratio offtake tools to bifaces (3:2). The range of flake tools at Ain Soda is much more restricted as well. Also, the percentage of scrapers in the tool

assemblage at Tabun is consistently higher than that

of bifaces, as one would expect in a more generalized

living area. For instance, in Units 11 and 12, the scraper index ranges from about 45 to 60 percent (although in Unit 14 it drops below 30 percent). At Ain Soda, the percentage of bifaces is much higher than that of

scrapers. Nonetheless, the prevalence of cleavers at

both Tabun and Ain Soda attests to the importance of

butchering large game animals at both sites.

Finally, site tool assemblages differ in how cores and

tools were made. Tabun assemblages show limited use

of Levallois techniques, special methods to produce desired forms of tool blanks by pre-shaping the cores

from which they were detached. As the bar graph of

modified Levallois indices shows, the three lowermost

units at Tabun have very few Levallois tools. They

begin to increase in Unit 11, perhaps reflecting a slow

transition to the Levantine Mousterian above it. At Ain

Soda, on the other hand, the use of Levallois techniques is common, reflecting a substantial knowledge of these

sophisticated flint-working strategies.

Raw Material Availability How people acquired high-quality raw material for

making stone tools, often ignored in the past research,

has become a standard concern in the interpretation

of the archaeological record. Tool forms and sizes

often reflect the quality and configuration of raw

materials, as well as the economic and subsistence

choices made by prehistoric people. High-quality, in situ tabular flint and bedded nodules of flint

occur in abundance in large sizes just a few tens

of centimeters beneath the surface of silt dunes in

Trench 4 and Trench 2 at Ain Soda and were used

extensively by the Acheulian flint workers as the

tool stone of choice. Nevertheless, sources of some

of the preferred raw material at Ain Soda have not

been located and may have come from some distance

away. In a survey of the Wadi el-Mughara in 1972,

Jelinek and his team located in situ nodules of flint in

all of the colors and qualities identified in the Tabun

excavations. This source was located in a basin 3 km

upstream in the wadi, in uncertain quantities and

sizes of nodules (Jelinek, personal communication

2005). We suggest that these differences?that is, the

distance stone workers had to travel to obtain flint

and especially the quantities and sizes of available

nodules?probably explain much of the variation

between biface assemblages from the Late Acheulian at Tabun and Ain Soda.

Tabun

Bats Hippopotamus

'Ain Soda C-Spring

Shrews Boar

Moles Roe Deer

Voles Fallow Deer

Mice Wild Goat

Hamsters Gazelle

Gerbils Hartebeest Hartebeest

Rock Cony Wild Horse Wild Horse Wild Horse Owls Onager Onager Onager

Hyena Wild Cattle Wild Cattle Wild Cattle Panther Rhinoceros Rhinoceros Rhinoceros

Wolf Elephant Elephant Elephant Fox River Turtle Giant Camel Dromedary Camel

Faunal Identifications at Tabun {Bate 1937), 'Ain Soda, and C-Spring (Clutton

Brock1989).

Acheulian Technologies At beginning of the Pleistocene, hominids already were using

fire and making stone, bone, and wooden tools. By the Middle

Pleistocene, they were wearing animal-skin clothing prepared with a variety of stone scraping and cutting tools. In the Levant,

bifacial tools appeared during the Middle Pleistocene about one million years ago.

Stone tools, largely made of flint, were used to process animal

kills, including those of elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, wild cattle, and gazelle, which roamed the Levantine landscape. Tools improved slowly over a period of many thousands of

years. Handaxes, for example, became smaller and better

shaped. Scrapers, made of thick flakes struck from flint cores, and used for scraping meat from bones and for processing animal skins, became better adapted for these purposes.

Handaxes occurred in a variety of forms appropriate for

different tasks, including butchering and cutting, piercing, chopping, and perhaps, as a last resort, for personal defense

against wild animals. Bifacial cleavers, a specialized form of handaxe, are now seen as large cutting or butchering tools. The

proliferation and abundance of handaxes suggest that perhaps

everyone, both men and women, had them. As techniques for

making handaxes slowly improved over the millennia, these

same techniques led to new types of specialized tools, ultimately

making the handaxe obsolete.


Major Tool Groups

91.45%

Ain Soda Tabun

Ratio of bifaces to flake tools at 'Ain Soda and Tabun.

Essential Scraper & Biface Indices

80.0%

70.0%

60.0%

50.0%

40.0%

30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

0.0%

IM1 U-12 U-13 U-14 'Ain Soda

Essential scraper and biface indices at Tabun and 'Ain Soda, including Type 38 (a naturally backed flake tool).


Essential-38 Racloir & Biface Indices

80.0%

70.0%

60.0%

50.0%

40.0%

30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

0.0%

U-11 U-12 U-13 U-14 AS-is

Essential scraper and biface indices at Tabun and 'Ain Soda, excluding Type 38.

Modified Levallois Index

Modified Levallois indices (which measure the importance of the use of Levallois techniques) at Tabun and 'Ain Soda. ILe is the "essential" IL

index, excluding unshaped flake tools; IL-38 excludes Type 38 (naturally backed flakes) as well as other unshaped flake tools.


The accessibility of good flint at

Tabun and Ain Soda might be reflected in the absolute dimensions of bifaces and

their ratios at the two sites. Although thickness means are similar, lengths and

widths at Ain Soda are markedly larger than for the assemblages at Tabun. The

probability that nodules around Ain

Soda were larger overall than those in

the Wadi el-Mughara is supported to some extent by the maximum lengths and widths of bifaces in the assemblages, and possibly by the minimum lengths and widths as well. Fortunately, observations of the remaining cortex

on the specimens from both sites

confirm these differences in the size and

configuration of the resource material.

A similar interpretation comes from looking at the relative

proportions of the bifaces themselves. The ratio of width divided

by length yields a summary of the "average" plan form of bifaces,

essentially a measure of "squatness." In general, bifaces are

narrower in proportion to length at

Ain Soda (except for Tabun1 s Unit

13, which contains the highest percentage of normally long and narrow Micoquian bifaces, a type of

piercing tool). The ratio of thickness divided by width provides an insight into the cross section of the average

biface in the assemblages. In this case,

the Ain Soda bifaces are relatively thin in relation to width, whereas in

all of the Tabun units, bifaces have a

chunkier cross section. Finally, the

long section (thickness in proportion to length) shows that the Tabun

samples are significantly stouter than

their counterparts at Ain Soda,

The consistency in the diff erences in the above ratios is also explained, however, by more

intensive resharpening of bifacial cleavers at Tabun than at

Ain Soda, When refurbishing a slicing edge across the end of the tool in this manner, the tool's length will clearly shorten;

Assemblage W

U-11 76.9 53.9

U-12 71.9 51.6

U-13 80.7 51.1

U-14 75.2 53.7

Ain Soda 102.4 67.2

Assemblage W/L T/W U-11 0.701 0.519

U-12 0.718 0.527

U-13 0.633 0.556

U-14 0.714 0.507

Ain Soda 0.656 0.384

Summary of biface traits at 'Ain Soda and Tabun.

Biface Dimension Means

u-11 U-12 U-13 U-14

Means of biface dimensions (in mm) from Tabun and 'Ain Soda.

'Ain Soda


Biface Dimensional Ratios

u-11 U-12 U-13 U-14

Means of ratios of biface dimensions from Tabun and 'Ain Soda.

'Ain Soda

I t

Comparison of bifacial cleavers from 'Ain Soda (left) and Tabun (right). (Photo: L Quintero, P. Wilke, J. Quintero, and G. Rollefson)


Kt.. r ?

Comparison of piercers from 'Ain Soda (left) and Tabun (right). (Photo: L Quintero, P. Wilke, J. Quintero, and G. Rollefson)

and while distal width and

distal thickness are affected, there is little effect on medial

width and thickness. The

"squatness index" (W/L) would mirror this kind of

reduction of length with

little narrowing of medial

width, and the shortening of the tool in resharpening would also show up in the more intensively resharpened bifaces in terms of the cross

section ("chunkiness") and

long section ("stoutness"). The minimum lengths

(mentioned above) for the

Tabun samples likewise

probably reflect the intensity of resharpening.

Additional evidence that

might support an influence on lithic manufacturing behavior due to distance from resources comes from two other aspects of the bifaces in

the various assemblages. Bifaces at 'Ain Soda are almost

exclusively made on nodule blanks (and the small number

of flake blanks are virtually all restricted to bifacial

cleavers on flakes), whereas

nearly a tenth of the bifaces at Tabun are made on flakes

(and these tend to be the

smallest in terms of absolute

dimensions). This finding suggests that at Tabun,

large flakes produced in

the decortication of flint

nodules were saved and used

for later modification into

bifacial tools for butchering purposes, an example of

efficient resource use due to

the location of flint sources.

Flint "husbandry" at Tabun can be seen also in the reuse

of bifaces as flake cores

once the bifaces approached exhaustion. At Ain Soda,

very few bifaces were recycled as cores, while at Tabun

nearly one-third of the sample was recycled in this manner.

Clearly, these differences reflect an easily accessible, flint

rich environment for the more fortunate hunters at Ain

f

A piercer from Tabun used as a flake core. Note the flake scar on the

lower right. (Photo: G. Rollefson)


Biface Blanks

99.30%

100.00%

91.10%

H Nodule Flake

8.90%

Ain Soda Tabun

Comparison of the use of flakes or nodules for the production of bifaces.

Bifaces Re-Used as Cores

90.00%

80.00%

70.00%

60.00%

50.00%

40.00%

30.00%

20.00%

10.00%

88.91%

DAInSoda Tabun

9.01% 5.09%

36.00%

3.49% I

Ym

Ratio of the use of expended bifaces as cores for the production of flakes.

Soda, and less substantial and more difficult to obtain flint resources for the cave dwellers at Tabun.

In sum, on the one hand we have the protected living site of Tabun Cave, extensively used over a very long duration, located in a lush woodland environment next to

Used as Core

Ain Soda Tabun

No 87.50% 58.91%

Possibly 9.01% 5.09%

Yes 3.49% 36.00%

Tool Groups

Ain Soda Tabun

BIFACES 56.71% 8.55%

FLAKE TOOLS 43.29% 91.45%

Biface blanks

Ain Soda Tabun

Nodule 99.30% 91.10%

Flake 0.70% 8.90%

Summary of biface traits at 'Ain Soda

and Tabun.

the Mediterranean shore. Here,

people capitalized on rich faunal resources but had limited access

to good stone for tools. In the eastern steppic regions, lakeshores

and springs supported megafauna and their human predators who

likely pursued a highly nomadic, if

tightly patterned, existence at sites

like Ain Soda. Logical use of these

environments would have required

hunting of large game and resulted in more ephemeral butchery sites

at favored locations where both

large game and tool stone were

easily accessible.

Conclusions The differences in these exam

ples from the eastern and western

margins of the Levantine Corridor are evident, but broader regional behavioral differences are not as obvious. It is clear that 'Ain

Soda (and the al-Jafr sites) differs

from Tabun and possibly other

Mediterranean coastal sites due

to the former's more limited

occupation and narrower range

of the activities. At this point, we simply do not have an obvious intact residential site in eastern Jordan with a broad range of activities to compare with those that presumably occurred at Tabun. We assume

that such sites exist and perhaps only await discovery. In the same vein, comparative data are needed on large


butchery sites that may exist in the west. In short, with more

regional site comparisons, a clearer view will emerge of the

complexity of behavioral differences and similarities. The site characteristics we have discussed at Tabun and Ain

Soda, we believe, reflect real differences in human choices.

These choices are the expectable expressions of the variable

array of hominid behaviors that depended on what was

available to use in the particular activities that took place in

different environmental settings. In the distant past, people

responded to diverse situations, choosing from a common

tool kit those items best suited for survival, just as we do

today. We can envision family members in the entrance to

Tabun Cave engaged in the domestic activities of the day.

Perhaps we can even find common ground with the nomadic

experience of butchering elephants on the sandy shore of

Lake Azraq. And is that not our goal?

Acknowledgment We are deeply grateful to Arthur Jelinek for facilitating our

research efforts and for helpful discussions concerning the

stratigraphy at Tabun Cave. We also thank Vance Holliday for

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gary O. Rollefson (Ph.D. University of Arizona) is a professor in the Department

of Anthropology at Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington. He specializes

in the prehistoric archaeology of Jordan and is director of the 'Ain Ghazal

archeological project.

Leslie A. Quintero (Ph.D. University of

California, Riverside) is a research asso

ciate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, where she is research director at the Lithic

Technology Laboratory. She specializes in the prehistoric archaeology of Jordan

and is co-director of the al-Jafr Basin

archaeological project.

Philip]. Wilke (Ph.D. University of

California, Riverside) is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at

the University of California, Riverside.

He specializes in lithic technology and is co-director of the aUJ?fr Basin

archaeological project.

Gary O. Rollefson

Leslie A. Quintero

'S

Ph?ipJ. Wilke

providing space for our research in his laboratory during our

stay at Tucson, and Sidney and Martha Wilke for providing

much-appreciated logistical support.

References Bate, D. M A.

1937 Part IL Paleontology: The Fossil Fauna from the Wady

el-Mughara Caves. Pp. 135-227 in The Stone Age of Mount

Carmel: Excavations at the Wady el-Mughara, Volume I, eds. D.

A. E. Garrod and D. M. A. Bate. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bordes, F. H,

1961 Typologie du Pal?olithique ancien et moyen. No. L Bordeaux:

Institut de Pr?histoire de l'Universit? de Bordeaux.

Clutton-Brock, J.

1989 A Re-Consideration o? the Fossil Fauna from C-Spring,

Azraq. Pp. 391-97 in The Hammer on the Rock: Studies in

the Early Paleolithic of Azraq, Jordan, eds. L. Copeland and E

Hours. British Archaeological Reports International Series

540. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Jelinek, A. J.

1982 The Tabun Cave and Paleolithic Man in the Levant. Science

216:1369-75.

McCown, T. D.

1961 Animals, Climate and Paleolithic Man. Kroeber Anthropological

Society Papers 25:221-30,

Quintero, L. A., Wilke, P J., and Rollefson, G. O.

2004 The Eastern Levant, the Pleistocene and Paleoanthropology.

ACOR Newsletter 16(l):l-3.

in press An Eastern Jordan Perspective on the Lower Paleolithic of the

"Levantine Corridor." In Studies in the History and Archaeology

of Jordan 9. Amman: Department of Antiquities.

Rollefson, G, O.

1978 A Quantitative and Qualitative Typological Analysis of Bifaces

from the Tabun Excavations, 1967-1972. Ph.D. Dissertation,

University of Arizona, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms

International.

Rollefson, G. O., Quintero, L. A., and Wilke, P J.

2005 The Acheulian Industry in the al-Jafr Basin of Southeastern

Jordan. Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society 35:53-68,


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by Michael S. Bisson, April Nowell, Carlos Cordova, Regina Kalchgruber, and Maysoon al-Nahar

Human evolution can be traced back 7,000,000 years. Modern humans evolved in Africa 160,000 years

ago and as recently as 26,000 years ago we shared

parts of the world with at least one other species?the Neanderthals, Since the discovery of the first Neanderthal

in 1856 in Germany, this species has generated controversy, whether it is questions concerning their genetic relationship to modern humans, their capacity for language and artistic

expression, or the reasons for their extinction (Mellars 1996).

Resolving these debates in the long term depends on an

accumulation of evidence for how Neanderthals adapted to the physical and cultural environments around them.

In other words, in order to understand why they died, we

need to first understand how they lived. There are only two places in the world where Neanderthals'

remains have been found?Europe and the Levant. Both early modern humans and Neanderthals were living in the Levant

by approximately 100,000 years ago. While Neanderthals first

evolved in Europe, the Levantine record is key to understanding the timing and roles of ecological and cultural factors in

facilitating or limiting their survival. Indeed, the Levant served as a biogeographic corridor between Africa and Eurasia for

more than 20 million years (Bar-Yosef 2000) with "every biotic

exchange that took place between the two realms [using] the 'Levantine Crossroad' as a major passageway" (Tchernov

1992:149). Perhaps more importantly, the movement of hominin groups (a term used to refer to living humans and

their extinct ancestors) in and out of the Levant turned this

region into a cultural crossroads between Paleolithic Africa and

Eurasia (Trinkaus 1993; Hublin 2000).

The Levantine Fossil Record Because Neanderthals originated in Pleistocene Europe, it is

believed that many of their distinctive features (including short

limbs, a stocky torso, extreme muscularity and an enlarged

nasal aperture) evolved as biological adaptations to cold

climate by a species with limited technological capabilities (Trinkaus 1988). The European fossil record is chronologically linear, with Homo heidelhergensis and Homo antecessor preceding

Neanderthals, who were replaced by anatomically modern

Homo sapiens (AMHs) between ca. 40,000 and 26,000 BP as

that species migrated into Europe from the south and east

(Meilars 1989a, 1996). In the Levantine corridor, the hominin

sequence is different. The early hominin record there is poorly

represented, although Homo ergaster must have begun living there as part of its expansion out of Africa as early as 1.95

million BP (Dennell 2003). In the Middle Paleolithic (ca. 250,000 to 45,000 BP), when the

Levantine fossil record becomes more complete, we find early forms of AMHs present from ca. 130,000 to 80,000 BP at the sites

of Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel. This is significantly earlier than most of the securely dated Neanderthals in the region except for the female found at Tabun (Israel) whose remains have

recently been dated to 122,000 ? 16,000 BP (Gr?n and Stringer 2000:610). All other Levantine Neanderthals (Amud, Kebara,

Dederiyeh) cluster between ca. 70,000 and 45,000 BP (Rak 1993; Shea 2001). There are no hominin fossils associated with the transitional stone tool industries that bridge the Middle and

Upper Paleolithic beginning at ca. 45,000 BP, making attribution of this transition to either species purely speculative. However,

the Early Upper Paleolithic Ahmarian (ca.38,000-26,000 BP) is definitely associated with AMHs (Bergman and Stringer 1989). It is therefore commonly assumed that this transition

was accomplished by AMHs. The most prominent explanation accounting for the disappearance of the European Neanderthals is that they were in some way adaptively inferior to AMHs, and that this may have involved basic cognitive as well as

technological/behavioral differences (Mellars 1989b, 1991). However, there is no universal agreement on this question

(Wolpoff and Caspari 1997; d'Errico et al. 1998), which remains one of the most contentious debates in paleoanthropology.

The Levantine corridor is potentially the most interesting

place to study this issue as there is a fundamental difference between the Levant and Europe that is not often emphasized.

As AMHs ourselves, we modern humans see our existence

and the Neanderthals' extinction as proof of the superiority of our AMHs ancestors. Yet the fossil record in the Levant now shows that Neanderthals and early AMHs may have

been contemporary at ca. 120,000 BP and that in the first

replacement episode (between ca. 70,000 and 65,000 BP) Neanderthals were the "victors." After that date, there is only very limited evidence of the simultaneous presence of AMHs

during the Neanderthal tenure (Rak 1998). It is important to note that the Neanderthal ascendancy coincides with the onset of Oxygen Isotope Stage 4 (which begins at 71,000 BP),


a period of cold and dry conditions in Western Europe that

may have shifted the Neanderthal's optimal biome south and east (Tchernov 1998). But this does not necessarily explain the

replacement, unless AMHs were culturally and or biologically unfit to compete in colder conditions. These are just a few of the issues that make the study of Middle Paleolithic adaptations in the Levant so important.

There are many inherent problems in assessing the relative

adaptive success of contemporary hominin species. Most

archaeological sites in the Levant (and everywhere else) do not yield hominin fossils. Although the Levant is considered to have abundant Middle Paleolithic hominin fossils, only thirteen of the hundreds of sites that have been investigated thus far have produced hominins; of these only six have yielded remains that can be positively identified as either Neanderthal or AMH (Shea 2003:327). Thus, classifying sites where no

hominin remains were found as either AMH or Neanderthal sites is potentially problematic. This is compounded by the fact that the technologies produced by the early AMHs of Skhul and Qafzeh and the Neanderthals that followed them are nearly identical (Bar-Yosef 1994). Both are associated with the Levantine Levallois Mousterian (described below), and

only the subtlest differences in retouching strategies have been detected (Bisson 2001).

Some archaeologists have proposed differences between Neanderthal and AMH residential and subsistence patterns

(Shea 2001:56-7) based on the sites where identified hominins are present. Neanderthals appear to have been living at individual sites over a number of seasons and radiating out

from these bases each day in a predominantly hunting-based economy, which is reflected in the higher frequency of Levallois

spear points at those sites. This pattern is referred to as a

"collector" subsistence strategy. In contrast, the two sites with

AMH fossils were single season occupations, suggesting greater group mobility and a forager strategy that had the potential to

exploit a wider variety of food sources. At this point, the sample of sites where we can unambiguously link specific hominins to

this collector versus forager model is too small to reach any firm conclusions. Indeed, although the extant data support the

model, it might not explain the replacement of early AMHs

by Neanderthals after 90,000 BP, because greater residential

mobility (a characteristic of AMHs in this model) is generally considered to be a more efficient resource exploitation strategy

than is a collector strategy.

One possible solution to the lack of association between

specific hominins and archaeological assemblages is to use

the established time ranges of each species in the Levant as a proxy for direct hominin associations. However, the

recent re-dating of the Tabun Neanderthal woman noted above raises problems for this approach. Until more securely dated fossils are found and we can be certain both that the

proposed time ranges for the two species are correct and

that there was no simultaneous presence of Neanderthals

and AMHs in the region, this solution risks "confirming" previously established models rather than testing them as

the hypotheses they actually are. As part of this process, we need to know more about changes in Levantine Middle Paleolithic land-use and subsistence strategies over time.

This is one of the goals of the archaeological surveys we have been conducting since 2002.

The Nature of Paleolithic Sites Paleolithic archaeological sites occur in a variety of

topographic contexts and reflect a number of different functions. Historically, in the Levant and elsewhere, there has been an excavator bias toward caves and

rockshelters for the understandable reasons that

they are relatively easy to locate and can preserve

long stratigraphie sequences of occupations. This was of particular interest to earlier archaeologists, with their culture-chronological orientation

(Trigger 1989). Such natural shelters can serve as temporary camps or task (i.e., activity specific)

locations, but most often appear to have been base

camps inhabited for significant durations. Open-air sites are also known from the Levant As would be

expected in a relatively dry terrain, these tend to be associated with springs, Pleistocene lake shores, or

other locations near a reliable supply of drinking water. Like caves, these can include both base and

temporary camps. There are also task sites, the

most common of which are lithic (flint) acquisition and initial processing locations. As summarized in the article, our surveys failed to find caves with evidence of Middle Paleolithic occupation but did locate a number of flint acquisition sites, at least one

open-air camp site, and one topographic feature that

may have served as an animal trap.

The Levantine Mousterian The Levantine Middle Paleolithic was initially defined based

on the long chrono-stratigraphic sequence in the Mt. Carmel Caves in Israel, principally the Tabun sequence (Garrod and Bate 1937). This was subsequently modified as more data and new dating techniques became available. The sequence begins with the late Lower/early Middle Paleolithic Acheulo-Yabrudian or Mugharan Tradition (from 350,000 to perhaps 250,000 BP), which includes three faci?s (variants), an Acheulian faci?s with many small handaxes, a Yabrudian faci?s with numerous

intensively retouched scrapers, and an Amudian faci?s with many non-Levallois blades (see sidebar "Basic Lithic

Technology"). These blades were transformed into knives by

blunting one edge. Because the Amudian blades superficially resemble Upper Paleolithic forms, this faci?s was initially


Map of Jordan showing survey areas. Map courtesy of Carlos Cordova.

s<

?_ n SYRIA

; glrbid

\ IRAQ \ \ \

ISRAEL /

Amman -Wadi Zarqa Ma'in

M p Madaba Survey Area ^-~"

hiban \ \

^ "Karak Wadi al-Koum \ Survey Area N

SAUDI ARABIA

Aqaba

Gulf of Aqaba

0 100 I_I_I

Kilometers

Map of northwest Jordan showing sites discussed in text. Map courtesy of Carlos Cordova.

called the Pre-Aurignacian (Jelinek 1982). The Mugharan has almost no Levallois

technique, and some archaeologists

consider it to be a late manifestation of the

Lower Paleolithic (Shea 2003). The Mousterian (250,000-40,000 BP)

is a single technological tradition with

very high frequencies of the Levallois

technique. It is divided into coastal and

inland/southern sequences (Marks 1992). The coastal sequence employs the names

of major stratigraphie units at Tabun

(Copeland 1975). From earliest to latest, these phases are:

Tabun D: Characterized by uni- or

bi-directionally prepared recurrent Levallois

cores with relatively little platform preparation.

Products are blades and elongated flakes or

points.

Tabun C: Levallois cores are recurrent with

centripetal preparation and multi-facet convex

striking platforms. Products are large circular or

oval flakes, but few points,

Tabun B: Levallois cores are recurrent

with unidirectional preparation and faceted

platforms. Products include frequent short, wide

Levallois points and some Levallois blades (Bar

Yosefl994).

The interior/southern variant was

originally described as similar to the

Tabun D-type Mousterian, with blades

and numerous elongated points. It was

considered to be contemporary with all three

coastal phases. The situation in the interior

is now known to be more complex, with

assemblages similar to Tabun C-type at Ar

Rasfa in northwest Jordan (Shea 1999) and

the sites reported here, and Tabun B-type at Wadi al-Hasa site 621, in west-central

Jordan (Potter 1995).

Wadi Zarqa Ma'in Paleolithic Complex

In May, 2005, our team surveyed the

Wadi Zarqa Ma'in in northwest Jordan as

a follow-up to a similar survey of the Wadi

al-Koum done in 2002. Both were part of a pilot project intended to assess Middle

Paleolithic land use on the eastern side of

the Rift Valley extending from Pleistocene


?>.

Lake Lissan up to and including the Madaba Plateau, and to

identify sites for future excavation. The long term goals of our

project are to expand our knowledge of Middle Paleolithic

adaptations in an area of environmental variation where the

Pleistocene oak-pistachio woodland along the Mediterranean coast graded to the more arid grasslands in the interior and to

compare these adaptations to patterns observed in other areas

of the Levant.

Our study area was the upper reaches of the Wadi Zarqa Ma'in and the western edge of the Madaba Plateau between

the town of Ma'in and Mt. Nebo, terrain featuring extensive

exposures of Cretaceous limestone formations in which

karstic processes have created many caves and rockshelters.

These same formations produce abundant flint nodules

that can be used for making stone tools and the mantling

I rip y y y y L ^v. r-S^^ l/i MX V

Map showing open-air sites discussed in text. Map courtesy of Carlos Cordova.

Caves sites in Wadi Zarqa Ma'in survey area.

sediment is a bed of red Mediterranean soil of Pleistocene

origin. Guided by our observations in the Wadi al-Koum, our reconnaissance strategy was to survey the plateau edge

looking for Middle Paleolithic artifacts and to explore all caves and rock-shelters in those areas where lithics (stone tools and the debris from making stone tools) were found.

Our initial work was in the Al-Huma area, which was already known to have extensive evidence

of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age activity. Ten caves and numerous rock-shelters were

inspected, but a large majority contained only a

thin filling of recent sheep dung. In most cases, this can be explained by the local bedrock,

which is the Amman Silicified Limestone. In

this formation, flint forms irregular horizontal seams at frequent intervals, inhibiting the

formation of deep caves in which sediments

could accumulate. However, we did find two

sites which may contain Middle Paleolithic

materials, the most promising of which is a

large sinkhole (WZM-1), 15 m in diameter

and at least 10 m deep containing a talus cone

of debris sufficiently deep to support a growth of trees. The vertical sides of this feature

preclude its use as a habitation site, however,

abundant lithics ranging in age from the

Middle Paleolithic through the Chalcolithic are scattered around its mouth. Because it

may have served as a water source and/or

as an animal trap for prehistoric people, we

have targeted this site for future excavation,


*.!$?iiM?s? mm. :. ,.*<

<40

WZM-1 "The Sinkhole." All the photos in this article were taken by Regina Kalchgruber.

realizing, of course, that any Middle Paleolithic deposits will

be deeply buried.

Given the limited success of our search for Middle

Paleolithic cave sites, the final two weeks of our survey were devoted to the discovery and testing of open-air sites.

Dispersed Middle Paleolithic lithics occur throughout the research area; however, one location that we named

the Ma'in Paleolithic Site Complex produced abundant

Middle Paleolithic remains. This locale includes two low

hills overlooking the Dead Sea along the road to Ma'in Hot

Springs. These hills include geological formations which

produce large flint nodules that can be used for making stone tools. Although there is a continuum of archaeological artifacts across this area, we divided the Ma'in Paleolithic

Site Complex into three sites, of which the two most

important are WZM-2, at the east end of the hills, and

WZM-3, located on the north flank of the westernmost of

the two hills, adjacent to a small valley.

WZM-3 The hillside on which WZM-3 is located has been almost

entirely deflated to bedrock; there is only one narrow terrace

contouring around the base of the hill, about 5 m above the

valley floor, that is horizontal enough to support a thin layer of

soil. Artifacts can be found on the entire hillside, but have been

concentrated on this terrace by downslope movement. During the survey we collected artifacts along the surface of this site

resulting in the recovery of 205 cores and 443 complete flakes.

Almost all are Middle Paleolithic in origin, with the exception of a single microblade core (typical of the Upper Paleolithic) and 5 heavily weathered bifaces that may be Acheulian (Lower

Paleolithic). Among the cores were 52 Levallois cores with

recurrent forms outnumbering preferential ones by a 2 to 1 ratio

and, most importantly, flake cores outnumbering point and blades

cores combined by almost a 3 to 1 ratio. Among the complete

flakes, normal and decortication flakes (the latter being the first


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Photograph of WZM-3._

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L

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flakes removed from a core) constitute over 80 percent of the

collection with blades accounting for only 10 percent. This site is

a lithic acquisition and preliminary reduction area in which the

dispersed distribution of cores and the debris from working the

cores and making tools mirrors the availability of flint. The very

high percentage of flakes with cortex on them (76 percent), as

well as the high percentage of casual cores suggests that finished

products, in the form of Levallois products as well as larger non

cortical flakes and blades produced by the other cores, were being taken to other locations, presumably habitation or task sites.

Cores found at WZM-3


JUK **T^PV:".

2&*^--t?**f* ?r ,fwmk

GfettSt?iiteptt?jRra :StfC?- < i. AhiiHEWiB

Road cut where WZM-2 was found.

WZM-2 At the northwestern end of the two hills, a road cut over

160 m in length exposes a stratigraphie section up to 2 m

deep. Two strata are exposed. The upper one, highly variable in thickness, consists of a colluvium containing abundant

lithics. In places, this colluvial layer is over one meter thick.

The lower stratum consists of a partially cemented breccia

capped by a crust of caler? te. It is not clear what the origin of this material is, but it is similar to modern spring deposits in the area and grades into what appears to be a spring

deposit near the mid-point of the road cut. This breccia rests on a bed of limestone bedrock. Lithics are present but are substantially less common in this unit and are widely

dispersed. Abundant brightly colored flint, grading from

light brown to orange and purple, outcrops as angular rubble at this end of the hill. This flint has excellent flaking

qualities, but larger pieces have many flaws, causing them to

break into angular chunks. This flint was only found in the

colluvial and brecciated layers. We excavated a 1 m by 50 cm test pit down the face of

the road cut and we also collected artifacts from the surface

around the test pit. Our work resulted in the recovery of

thousands of specimens, almost all of them from the upper colluvial layer. Those lithics have undamaged and very sharp

edges. Analysis of these specimens is ongoing, but preliminary

observations show that Levallois products are almost entirely absent from the colluvial layer and cores are rare.

Among the cores collected on the surface, the most

common types are casual and single platform (40 percent), followed by two platform (24 percent), normal blade and

polyhedral (12 percent each), and discoid (8 percent).

Striking platforms on these cores are predominantly

plain (80 percent), but the rest (20 percent) are Middle

Paleolithic multi-facet convex forms. Only 11 cores of the

colored flint were recovered in the road cut, of which 5 were

casual (2 platform or polyhedral), 5 normal blade cores, and one preferential Levallois point core. All 5 blade cores

have plain platforms and are smaller than almost all of the

Middle Paleolithic blade cores recovered from WZM-3. At

this point in our analysis, it seems that the colluvial layer contains elements of both Middle Paleolithic and early

Upper Paleolithic technologies. Determining if that is in

fact the case will be a major focus of future research. The

scattered lithics found in the lower cemented breccia layer are significantly different. Our collection is restricted to

what was exposed in the road cut. Almost all of the lithics were heavily patinated white flint rather than the colored

flint. In addition to a few normal flakes, they included one

casual and one polyhedral core as well as one large prismatic blade and a fragment of a second large blade.


Test pit at WZM-2.

The Wheatfield Site At the northwest end of the road cut, the breccia stratum

grades into a narrow valley floor with soil that is currently under cultivation. Inspection of that field located a discrete

concentration of artifacts that was restricted to a 25 by 35 m

area adjacent to the road. Reconnaissance further down this

field revealed virtually no other artifacts. The colluvial layer

pinches out on this flank of the hill, and although there are

some artifacts made of the colored flint, a majority are white

patinated flint similar to that in the spring deposit. Of the 9 white flint cores, 7 are Levallois, 2 flake, and 2

point. Of the 37 flakes collected from this site, 13 are colored

flint from the colluvial layer, but 24 are white. Among those,

7 are large Levallois flakes, 3 are large normal flakes, one is a

blade, and 3 are naturally-backed knives. There are also three

true tools, all with notched or deliberately serrated edges. This collection stands in stark contrast to the others made in

this survey. Not a single formal tool was recovered among the

hundreds of flakes in the surface collection around the test pit, and the 825 sq m of the WZM-2 Wheatfield site produced as

many formal tools and almost as many Levallois flakes as did

the 30,000 sq m collected at WZM-3. Thus we believe that

the colluvial layer at WZM-2, dated to between 24,200 BP

and 36,700 BP, is an intensive flint acquisition and processing station. The brecciated layer, dated to more than 286,000

BP, represents an earlier Paleolithic use of the land next to a

spring. This date appears to be too old and is only provisional. The Wheatfield site, which is the only concentration of

finished products found in the entire survey, may be an open air campsite also associated with the spring. Because the soil

at that site may preserve in situ artifacts below the plow zone,

area excavation there is a high priority.

The Middle Paleolithic-Upper Paleolithic Transition

The transition from flake-based Middle to blade-based

Upper Paleolithic technologies has been documented at a

small number of sites in the Levant and occurs at ca. 45,000 BP,

although the precise nature of the transition varies from place to place. At the open-air site of Boker Tachtit in the Negev

desert, Israel, a stratified sequence documents a gradual

replacement of elongated unidirectional Levallois products,

including points, by prismatic blades (Marks 1993). A similar

process occurs at Ksar Akil, Lebanon (Ohnuma and Bergman

1990). In Umm el Tlel, Syria, the transitional layers again show the derivation of blade production from elongated Levallois point production (Bo?da and Muhesen 1993). The

end result of these changes in core technology was exclusively unidirectional core face preparation and plain, as opposed to

faceted, platform preparation.

The cores made of colored flint from the colluvial layer of

WZM 2 may represent a part of this Middle Paleolithic-Upper Paleolithic technological transition, but one that is different

from those noted above. There is no evidence that the rather

poorly executed normal blade cores are derived from elongated, recurrent Levallois point cores. Overall, Levallois point cores

are much less common than Levallois flake cores in the Wadi

al-Koum and Wadi Zarqa Ma'in collections and are preferential rather than recurrent (see sidebar, Basic Lithic Terminology).

The natural fractures of the colored flint as it broke free from

its source veins created angular blocks with natural flat striking

platforms and corners conducive to the initiation of a sequence

of blades. Nevertheless, these blocks could easily have been

worked using typical Middle Paleolithic flaking strategies,

including the faceting of striking platforms. The predominance of plain platforms and blade removals combined with a few

Middle Paleolithic flake core types in our small sample may

represent a novel variation on the Levantine Middle Paleolithic

to Upper Paleolithic transition process, but this will only be

confirmed by the excavation of a larger sample and refinement

of the dating of this potentially important site.

Middle Paleolithic "Smears" In addition to the sites found by our survey, scattered

individual Middle Paleolithic artifacts were found in almost

all areas where Pleistocene, red Mediterranean soils were

inspected. The scatter we observed is both horizontal and

vertical. In drainage ditches, road-cuts, soil quarries, and

other modern excavations into the red Mediterranean soils,

artifacts occurred at varying depths rather than discrete

horizons. Virtually all prior reconnaissance in the Levant

(Shea 2001) has produced similar results and, at least on the

Madaba Plateau, this scatter differs from the record of the

Upper and Epipaleolithic periods, which were represented

by a total of less than 10 individual artifacts out of the many


Artifacts from the Wheatfield site.

hundreds recorded. This pattern, which can be referred to as

"Middle Paleolithic smears," has not received much attention

from archaeologists, who are justifiably cautious in trying to interpret the behavior represented by artifacts found on

the surface. Deposits in open-air settings can be subject to

a wide variety of natural disturbances such as erosion and

transport by flowing water, bioturbation (movements caused

by animal burrowing, trampling, etc.), and wind action, all

of which can move artifacts out of their original depositional circumstances. Moreover, there is good reason to believe

that most Middle Paleolithic artifacts now exposed on the

surface have either suffered at least 40,000 years of direct

exposure to the elements, or have been buried and more

recently exposed by water or wind erosion. These latter

processes, particularly flowing water (including sheet erosion), can size-sort artifacts by removing smaller pieces and also

generate natural concentrations, creating "sites" that do not

actually reflect prehistoric behavior patterns. In the case of

wind erosion (deflation), isolated artifacts buried at different

depths may become concentrated on the surface, creating a

false association. However, these processes act with different

intensities depending on local topography, processes of

sedimentation, and erosion.

We think that these disturbance processes had relatively little effect on the horizontal distribution of Middle Paleolithic

artifacts on the Madaba Plateau. The red Mediterranean

soils in which the artifacts are found were deposited by wind

action rather than flowing water, a circumstance that reduces

horizontal movement if the terrain is relatively flat. Although the specimens observed in our survey were certainly affected

by some wind action, low intensity sheet erosion, and

trampling by both wild animals prior to their original burial

and by modern domestic animals after their recent exposure,

we do not think they were transported far from their original

point of discard. To test this, we systematically inspected wadi

bottoms and stream gravel deposits, where artifacts would be

:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H mx mm. mut ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H^v

concentrated if they had been moved significant distances

by flowing water. We found only two circumstances where

that had occurred. One was a gravel-filled swale with a few

water abraded Middle Paleolithic cores and bifaces situated

between two completely deflated hilltops on the Wadi al

Koum (WKM 10). The other circumstance was the steep

slopes of large wadis or hillsides, which generally retained

little or no soil. In those areas, sheet erosion concentrated

artifacts on any natural terraces. However, on the plateau

and in broader valleys in which the red Mediterranean soils

have survived, inspection of small stream beds revealed no

accumulations of artifacts. We are thus confident that the

positions of artifacts relative to topographic features have

remained the same as when they were originally discarded,

and thus may hold clues to Middle Paleolithic resource

exploitation strategies.

In the pattern we have observed thus far, flakes and cores, as well as a few handaxes, occur as isolated pieces. Retouched

tools are rare. Of the formal tool categories, unretouched

Levallois points, likely spear tips (Shea 1988), are the most

common. Like the cores collected at flint sources, the most

common isolated cores are recurrent Levallois forms, but


Basic Lithic Terminology Middle Paleolithic stone tools are made by direct

percussion flaking, usually employing a hard (i.e.

dense, non-brittle stone such as quartzite), but

sometimes using a soft (i.e. soft limestone, bone,

antler, or hardwood) hammer. Shaping stone

by grinding only became common during the

Neolithic. In percussion flaking, a suitable piece

of siliceous rock like chert or flint is struck with

glancing blows on flat surfaces near its edge to

remove chips from the underside of that edge. The piece that is struck is called a core, and if the core itself is worked into a finished tool, it is

called a core tool The flat surface on the core

that is struck is called the striking platform. The pieces removed by percussion are called

either flakes or, if their length is more than twice

their width, blades. A flake has an exterior face that was on the outer surface of the core before it

was struck, and an interior face, a planar surface

marked by a bulge (the bulb of percussion)

adjacent to the point of impact. The exterior

face may be cortical (covered with the original weathered surface of the core), faceted with flake scars from prior flake removals from the core, or

a combination of both. At one end of a flake or

blade will be the portion of the core's striking

platform that was removed when the piece was

detached. Retouch is the process of secondary

flaking to refine a piece into a tool. Retouch can

be either unifacial if retouch flakes are removed

from only one face of a piece, or bifacial if retouch

flakes are removed from both faces. In the Middle

Paleolithic, the great majority of tools were made

by unifacially retouching flakes. These retouched

pieces are called formal tools.

Because Middle Paleolithic peoples relied on

flake, or in some cases blade, tools, strategies to

produce the blanks (unmodified flakes or blades)

for these tools were central to their technology. In

Europe, the most common technique was to work

sequentially around the perimeter of a nodule,

taking flakes from both faces. This discoid

technique produces large, thick, asymmetrical

flakes with deep striking platforms that may be either plain (one facet) or multifaceted.

Expended discoid cores are roughly circular in

outline, with bi-conical cross-sections and zig

zag edge profiles. A second strategy, the Levallois

technique, was to prepare one face of the core

with either centripetal (with scars converging on the center of the core) or parallel flaking to

create a uniform convex surface from which one

or more large, symmetrical, thin Levallois flake, blade, or point (symmetrical triangular flakes) was then struck. The opposite face of the core

was often minimally worked except for those

parts of the edge that were carefully prepared with small facets to create a striking platform suitable for the removal of Levallois flakes. Levallois products tend to mirror the outline of the core face, and in this way the makers could

control the shape of the flakes produced. One

important characteristic of Levallois products is

that, except for the platform end, their edges are

uniformly sharp. Because strong platforms with

the correct suitable exterior edge angle (ca. 70?) are essential to strike large flakes, both Levallois

and discoid cores often had platforms prepared with two or more facets. Platform faceting is

much more common in the Middle Paleolithic than

it is in the Upper Paleolithic. Levallois cores

designed to produce a single flake, blade, or

point are called preferential, those producing

multiple products are recurrent (Bo?da 1995). The Levallois technique was employed in varying

frequencies throughout Europe, Western Asia, and Africa, but it was most common in the

Levantine Levallois Mousterian (Marks 1992).


what is most striking is the lack of chipping debris where

these cores are found. In these low-energy depositional and

erosional environments, chipping debris would be expected if the core was being worked where it was discarded. Yet, the frequency of flakes around cores is no higher than the

background density of artifacts. It would appear that the

cores were being carried by hominins as convenient sources

of new tools, and some were possibly also being used as tools

themselves. Our future research will try to provide a more

complete explanation for this pattern.

One characteristic of many of the isolated artifacts is

extensive damage to their edges. This is visible to the naked

eye and consists of small flake removals rather than the

rounding and crushing usually caused by water transport.

This is unusual in that the surrounding sediments are fine

grained and not conducive to the creation of this type of

damage. Trampling by modern and ancient animals is one

possible explanation. These areas have been extensively

grazed by livestock since the Neolithic, but damage caused

by recent trampling, as well as by the plowing that effects

virtually all intact soil on the Madaba plateau today, is

easy to detect on the heavily patinated Middle Paleolithic

artifacts. Although fresh damage scars are present on many

specimens, the great majority of damage scars are as heavily

patinated as the rest of the flaked surfaces. In some cases,

damage scars were sealed under the carbonate encrustation

that coated many specimens. This is further corroboration

that the damage occurred either before or shortly after the

artifacts were discarded. Utilization by hominins is one

possible cause, although trampling in the Pleistocene or

some unknown depositional circumstance cannot be ruled

out. Archaeologists must be extremely cautious in attributing

edge damage to hominin utilization when surface-collected

Paleolithic artifacts from open-air settings are involved.

The most likely cause is some form of post-depositional

process (Levi-Sala 1986). If additional study supports an

interpretation of use-wear on these specimens, then the

potential for identifying land-use patterns from their

distribution would be enhanced. Only further research will

resolve this question.

Future Research The surveys of the Wadi Zarqa Ma in and Wadi al-Koum

have documented abundant evidence of Middle Paleolithic

presence in northwest Jordan. Because only a few Lower

Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic artifacts were recovered, it appears that the survey area was not regularly used by

hominins during those times. The geology of the survey area

is such that cave deposits with long occupation sequences are not present, but task sites such as flint acquisition and

preliminary processing stations are common. At least one

open-air campsite has been located and designated for future

excavation. The Middle Paleolithic technologies found in

both surveys do not match the majority of material reported from the Levantine interior. Until recently, almost all interior

sites were rich in Levallois blades and points, making them

most similar to the Tabun D-Type Levallois Mousterian

of the coastal sequence. These blade rich assemblages are

not restricted to the early time span of the D Type on the

coast and instead covered the entire range of the Middle

Paleolithic (Henry 1998). Although some Levallois blade

and point cores were recovered in our systematic surface

collections, the majority of formal specimens were recurrent

Levallois flake cores producing short, broad flakes. Like the

assemblage recently reported from Ar Rasfa in Northwest

Jordan (Shea 1999, 2003), our material more closely resembles the Tabun C-Type. If this is correct, then the

Wadi Zarqa Ma'in and Wadi al-Koum sites mark the most

southerly manifestation of this technological tradition in the

Levantine interior yet recorded.

The Madaba plain has considerable potential for developing an understanding of Middle Paleolithic adaptations in the

Levant. In the Pleistocene, it was an ecologically diverse area

bordered on the west by the rift valley, with its oak-pistachio

woodland, and grading to semi-arid savannah in the east.

Our recent research and studies by other archaeologists demonstrate that a wider variety of stone technologies was

being used to exploit this environment than was once believed.

Data from this area may be relevant to testing the niche

partitioning and other models proposed to explain possible differences between Neanderthal and early AMH adaptations in the Levantine corridor (summarized in Shea 2003). Much

research remains to be done, not the least of which is finding a way of correctly attributing archaeological assemblages to

hominin species. Although our research area does not appear to have the potential for producing hominin fossils, which are

almost exclusively preserved in cave deposits, it does offer many

possible insights into Middle Paleolithic land-use patterns.

Identifying and explaining those patterns will be a primary goal of our future research.

Acknowledgements The research was made possible by support from the

Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC General Research Grants to April Nowell and Michael

Bisson) and The University of Victoria, McGill University and Oklahoma State University. We would also like to

thank the Department of Antiquities in both Amman and

Madaba for permission to conduct our work and for being so gracious and to everyone at ACOR for their kindness

and logistical support. Finally, we would like to thank Mr.

Zakariya Ben-Badhann and Mr. Abdullah al-Bwareed for

their hard work and expertise. It was truly wonderful to

work with you all. All the photographs used in this article were taken by Regina Kalchgruber.


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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Michael Bisson is an Associate

Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, McGill University. He is a specialist on prehistoric technology,

including both metals and lithics. His current research focuses on hominid dispersals

through the Levantine Corridor during the late Lower and Middle Paleolithic. His

analysis of Paleolithic stone-tool reduction

sequences is informed by over 30 years experience as a flint-knapper.

April Nowell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the

University of Victoria. She specializes in Neanderthal behavior, the archaeology of

children, and the origins of art, language, and symbol use. For the past 15 years she has worked on Paleolithic projects in France and Jordan.

Carlos E. Cordova is Associate

Professor of Geography at Oklahoma State

University, Stillwater. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin.

His areas of expertise are Geoarchaeology,

Geomorphology, and Quaternary palynology and phytoliths. His research focuses on

environmental change during the Late

Quaternary, focusing mainly on vegetation, humans and climate. His main study areas

are in Jordan, the Crimean Peninsula, the

Great Plains of North America, the American

Southwest, and Mexico.

Regina Kalchgruber is Research Assistant

Professor in the Department of Physics at

Oklahoma State University and specializes in luminescence dating and environmental

dosimetry. Her research focuses on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating applied to archaeology, Earth sciences,

and planetary sciences, in particular the

surface of Mars.

Dr. Maysoon al-Nahar received her

Ph.D. from Arizona State University. She is currently Chair of the Department of

Archaeology at the University of Jordan and Director of the Archaeological Museum and Heritage Museum at the University of

Jordan. Dr. al-Nahar directs the Tell Abu es-Swwan Project, Jerash, (University of

Jordan field school) and is involved in several other archaeological projects in Jordan.

Michael Bisson

April Nowell

Carlos E. Cordova

Regina Kalchgruber

Maysoon al-Nahar


Shelter or Hunting Camp?

Accounting for the Pretence

of a Deeply Stratified Cave

Site in the Syrian Steppe

by Bruce Schroeder

As I watched, the younger of the two wives in a

Bedouin family clambered up the sloping surface

of a massive stone ridge in the middle of the

Syrian Desert. With an enormous rubber bladder on her

back, she searched for water that, after an autumn rain,

was captured in pockets in the rock. Wind blown debris

along with the detritus of passing flocks was also caught in the pockets?not the most salubrious of water sources.

In the fall of 1969 the Bedouin family was camped in

front of the ridge, called Jebel M'qeittaa, while their

sheep and goats grazed. I was there to re-excavate Jerf

al-Ajla, a small cave located at the base of the ridge.

Two Bedouin boys in front of their herd, offering a bowl of fresh

camel milk to passing archaeologists (October 1965).Note the sparse

vegetation in the background. Unless otherwise noted, all photos and illustrations are by the author.

Jebel M'qeittaa and Jerf al-Ajla with cave opening showing in the

sunlight; black Bedouin tent on left and our white expedition tent on

the right (October 1965).

I? . ..?J^pllipilfcr^?;: . ^^y^&^'MW^^W

mam *$$$$ Al'?ft: llf? S?'?'

Paleolithic archaeologists usually concentrate on site

chronology and artifact assemblages and overlook explanations for site locations, but watching this woman search for water in

the Syrian Desert made me wonder why people returned to this

cave, which lacked a spring or any other source of water, over

and over for hundreds of thousands of years. Some might say that a cave like Jerf al-Ajla was desirable simply for the shelter it

provided from desert sun and winter cold and rains. The simple presence of a cave, however, never guarantees its occupation.

Why did people choose repeatedly to come to and stay at this

particular site? What was the attraction that this location held over thousands of years? Can we learn something about the

lifeways and motivations of those people by examining the

factors that led to its selection?

The Local Environment of Jerf al-Ajla The arid interior of Syria is an enormous flat, open plain that

forms the northern apex of the Arabian Desert. (See sidebar?

The Syrian Interior.) Cutting across the Syrian steppe-desert are a series of ridges that have played an essential role in

shaping the human and animal life of the region. These ridges collect rainfall which drains into a series of interior basins where

they form artesian springs and seasonal lakes. Between these

ridges are synclines, or depressions. In antiquity they served as

natural routes for ancient caravans, now they contain highways

carrying traffic between Damascus and Tadmor (Palmyra). These corridors also funneled migrating herds toward the

limestone highlands of central Syria and directly toward the cave of Jerf abAjla.

Registration map indicating the area covered in the satellite image (from Fortin 1999: 32).


Certainly the most heavily occupied of the basins of the

Syrian interior throughout the Paleolithic is the El Kowm oasis, located approximately 90 km northeast of the Palmyra basin.

With numerous artesian springs situated in the middle of the

steppe-desert, El Kowm attracted humans (and herds) right

through the Paleolithic. Flint beds are also present around the

basin in several locations. (See sidebar?Natural Resources,

Food and Flint). Visitors left behind an enormous variety of

archaeological evidence at almost 200 mostly Paleolithic sites

(Le Tensorer, et al. 1997). These range from open campsites, to flint workshops and the most impressive archaeological remains, calcareous spring mounds. These are mounds of

stratified calcareous deposits accumulated around prehistoric

springs?some reach 20 m. Many contain long sequences of

industries from the early Acheulian, through the flake and

blade industries of the Yabrudian, Hummalian, Mousterian,

Upper Paleolithic, and Epipaleolithic (Jagher and Le Tensorer

1995; Bo?da 1997). Neolithic and even Bronze and Iron Age materials are also found in various part of the basin.

While the Palmyra basin is of similar size, it has quite different hydrological characteristics and archaeological evidence. Instead of fossilized artesian spring mounds with

their impressive Paleolithic deposits and excavations, the

major prehistoric evidence from the Palmyra Oasis comes

from the excavation of a single cave, Mugharet ed Douara

I (Akazawa 1979b; Akazawa, et al. 1973; Akazawa and

Sakaguchi 1987). The cave, on the northern edge of the

depression, overlooks the broad expanse of the steppe-desert

and the lake that sometimes forms in the Palmyra basin

following heavy seasonal runoff. The depression is bounded on the west and north by ridges significantly higher than the

plateau surrounding the Kowm basin. During wet periods of the Pleistocene, runoff from the ridges surrounding the

Palmyra basin formed a lake of impressive size, estimated at over 500 sq km (Sakaguchi 1978); undoubtedly, the lake

attracted game. Judging by the artifacts recovered from them, the lake terraces formed during the Middle Paleolithic. At

present the water level fluctuates significantly and did so

during recent millennia as well.

A few artesian springs are present in the southwest part of

the basin. They are associated with fossilized sediments that, like El Kowm, have yielded Paleolithic remains. But in the

Palmyra basin, unlike El Kowm, it is the wadi gravels, wells, and lake-shore terraces that contain prehistoric materials

ranging from the Middle Paleolithic to the Epipaleolithic

(Fujimoto 1979a; Fujimoto 1979b) and the Prepottery Neolithic A and B. Unfortunately, there have been few

investigations of these survey reports.

As at El Kowm, flint outcrops and workshops are located a

short distance from Douara. Abundant raw material is found at several locations in the Jebel Douara basin, immediately over (i.e., north of) the ridge in which the cave is formed. One

of the flint localities is identified as containing late Acheulian, 23 are associated with the Levantine Mousterian and 19

with the Prepottery Neolithic

(Akazawa 1979a). The Ed Dou depression, or

basin, is west of the Palmyra basin. Even though it is only a short distance away, the Ed

Dou should be considered a

separate geographical feature

from the Palmyra basin.

It is 15 km west of it and

separated by two significant

ridges; it also has a separate

drainage system. The Ed Dou

is an open basin formed at the

junction of two major ranges,

the Central (or Northern)

Palmyrides and the Frontal

(or Southern) Palmyrides. In

contrast to the other basins,

it is without a local source of

surface water except for brief

periods after precipitation falls

in the immediate area or, more

likely, precipitation falls in the

highlands north of the area and

then flows down the large Wadi

Abiad system, through the Wadi

Abiad gap, and into the Ed Dou.

Satellite image of the Syrian desert showing some of the topographic features mentioned in the text.

Satellite image from NASA Visible Earth image archive (http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1410).


The Syrian Interior The limestone ridges occur in two groups known

as the Central and Frontal (or the Northern and

Southern) Palmyrides. The Central Palmyrides are a complex of highlands extending for 300 kilometers eastward from the eastern flanks of the AntULebanon

Mountains in the Horns area passing north of Palmyra to the Euphrates River. The Frontal Palmyrides form a

series of braided ridges stretching northeastward 170 kilometers from the Damascus basin to the Palmyra region (GORS 1996). This cluster of ridges ends on

the doorstep ofJerfaUAjla at one of the major interior

drainage basins of central Syria, the Ed Dou. Not surprisingly, the interior drainage basins are

the major centers of Paleolithic occupation in central

Syria. They are also the key to understanding human

presence in the steppe-desert zone. They offer in a single location critical factors such as water, abundant flint

(for hunting tools) plus animal herds attracted to the

springs. The steppe also provides nutritious foods like

roots, fruits, seeds, nuts and desert truffles. The Syrian interior, as elsewhere in the Near East,

has a Mediterranean climate. Precipitation generally

falls during the four-month cold season, December

through March, although rain can fall anytime from October through June. In the highlands north of

Palmyra, precipitation in winter can mean snow. This

occasionally results in blizzards and knee-deep drifts that

quickly melt but still create havoc among the Bedouin and their flocks. During the Pleistocene, the climate underwent major changes. During the period of Middle Paleolithic either precipitation increased or temperature

decreased (leading to less water evaporation), producing a high lake level in the Palmyra basin with Mousterian

artifacts found on the high terraces (Sakaguchi 1978). This would also mean increased vegetation cover in the

interior steppe.

Even under today's climatic regime the area is not

as barren as the impression given in many images.

What often appear in photographs are areas where only an Artemisia (wormwood) -Chenopodiaceae steppe

survives, the result of centuries of degradation by

deforestation and overgrazing. The older inhabitants

of the region can recall the continuing loss of trees and

ground cover during recent decades. Nevertheless,

Gordon Hillman captured the enormous potential of the steppe, even under the modern climatic regime in

photographs taken west of the Euphrates River, in the

vicinity of Abu Hureyra, in April 1983. What is the most accurate way of characterizing

the environment of central Syria? Some, emphasizing

climate, refer to the area as "desert" (Emberger and

The Zone 5 Dry Steppe as it could be today (after a wet spring and the removal of grazing pressure). Compare this with the photograph of

the two Bedouin boys (Photo by Gordon Hillman).


Gaussen 1963). At other times, emphasizing the

vegetation cover, researchers describe the area as

"subdesert steppe" (Emberger and Gaussen 1969). More recently, Andrew Moore and colleagues, in a

carefully detailed analysis, differentiate two vegetation zones covering the Syrian interior. The Zone 5 Steppe is identified as a moist and medium-dry steppe or a

very dry steppe to note the dominant vegetation forms.

It is found in areas with less than one hundred and

fifty millimeters precipitation and occupies much of the

open plains we associate in southwest Asia with the

term "steppe." The Zone 4 Steppe is also located in

central Syria and has been identified as a terebinth

almond open woodland steppe supporting drought resistant tree growth and a ground cover of grasses

beneath the trees. It is a bit moister than Zone 4 as

it is associated with the febels making up the higher elevations of the central Palmyrides.

Close up view of the Zone 5 Dry Steppe (Photo by Gordon Hillman).

As with the other basins, there is ample evidence for human

presence. Numerous caves and rock shelters with surface

evidence of human occupation from the Middle Paleolithic

and later line the ridges overlooking the Ed Dou leading to the

Wadi Abiad gap. As the only one of these sites excavated so far,

Jerf al-Ajla demonstrates that this area has been occupied since

at least the Late Acheulian.

The Archaeological Exploration of Jerf al-Ajla Palmyra and the area of the cave can be distinguished from the

desert further south and west by its topography and somewhat

higher precipitation. Both of these factors have contributed to

significant human activity in the region, especially under the

Romans who built towns and cities (Palmyra being the most

prominent) as well as dams, fortresses, boundary markers, and

tracks. Until Jerf al-Ajla was brought to the attention of the

archaeological world in 1955, however, no cave sites in the

Syrian Desert had been explored. The question remains, why was the steppe-desert occupied

for hundreds of thousands of years and why specifically a site

such as Jerf al-Ajla, which lacked a permanent source of water

that one would think was especially necessary for humans and

animals living in a "desert." To answer this we must look at

the environment of the Syria interior and then in particular at

the landscape and setting of Jerf al-Ajla. First, we should take

a look at the cave of Jerf al-Ajla and its excavation in order to

reveal the history of its human occupation.

Through the work of Dr. Carleton Coon of the University of

Pennsylvania, Jerf al-Ajla became the first Paleolithic site to be

excavated in the arid interior of the Levant in 1955. Numerous

other caves and rockshelters located in the better watered rim

surrounding the desert had been excavated and published,

including the Wadi el-Mughara series (et-Tabun, es-Skhul,

el-Wad) (Garrod and Bate 1937), Yabrud and the Wadi Skifta

series (Shelters: 1, 2, and 3) (Rust 1950), and Oumm Qatafa,

Erq el-Ahmar, Abu Sif, and el-Khiam in the Judean desert

(Neuville 1951). Coon believed, however, that the arid interior

might hold evidence of early blade production and early forms

of the Modern Humans who produced them. His excavation

of the cave lasted only three weeks during which he removed

most of the deposits under the existing cave roof.

The long series of industries?from the late lower

Paleolithic to the Epipaleolithic?Coon found at Jerf al-Ajla was surprising, but especially intriguing was the sequence of

Middle Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic industries present in a contiguous series of cave deposits. This was a rare

occurrence at that time; in Western Europe and the Levant

such industries were typically found in separate caves and

rock shelters, and, when they were found together in a single

deposit, many archaeologists argued that the mixture was

caused by displacement due to freezing or water erosion, or

to bad excavation techniques. In recent decades, more sites

have been excavated that contain sediment with both Middle

and Upper Paleolithic industries but, until the early seventies,

they had not yet been thoroughly studied or published.


A Epipaleolithc (Kebaran) B Aurignacian+Mousterian

{Eontntt by wuiiuio

C Late Mousterian 35,700 BP

D Levantine Mousterian (TabunB type) 43,000 BP

E Levantine Mousterian (Tabun D

F Mousterian Tabun D type

G Final Acheulian with Levallois

H Final Acheulian (no Levallois)

St? + UBI + SIBO + SlWl a S1W? + S1W3 +

?3**W

- J tfjr &? ' &

'**'

Drawn section

of Jerf al-Ajla showing major

layers and their industrial identity.

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Author's test trench (?n 1965) cut through the section left by Coon

excavation (in 1955).

Except for a single chapter in a popular book, The Seven Caves

(Coon 1956), in which he described the cave along with six

other excavations over a 16 year period in various parts of the

Middle East from Morocco to Afghanistan, Coon did not publish the data he obtained from Jerf al-Ajla. Further, he had saved

only ten percent of the lithic material excavated. The other 90

percent was dumped in a pile on the cave terrace at the entrance

as a result of a conflict over rule interpretation between Coon

and the representative of the Antiquities Department. In 1965, a decade after Coon, I returned to Jerf al-Ajla1 to

conduct my own limited excavation which involved a square meter test pit cut directly through the six-and-a-half-meter

thick deposits (Schroeder 1969). My objective was to check

the stratigraphy in a fresh exposure and to obtain a complete

sample of the cultural remains, especially the lithics.

The Attractions of Jerf al-Ajla Despite the obvious challenges faced by early hominids

inhabiting a desert steppe, (e.g., limited water and food) the

interior of central Syria clearly offered sufficient rewards to attract

Paleolithic populations for thousands of years. The three interior

drainage basins of central Syria were not equally attractive,

however, to judge by the density and persistence of Paleolithic

and post-Pleistocene occupations. El Kowm seems to have offered

sufficient resources of water, food, and flint to have been the most

intensively inhabited throughout the Pleistocene and into the

Holocene (when other environmental factors became dominant). The Palmyra and Ed Dou basins were less attractive, probably because neither had a reliable supply of fresh water.

The Palmyra basin's large lake was perhaps attractive only for short periods when runoff from the winter-spring rains

and melting snowfields flowed from the highlands into the


Natural Resources?Food and Flint It had been a wet winter and the local Sheikh made

certain that grazing pressure on the steppe vegetation was kept low (apparently by maintaining a stock of Kalashnikov rifles). Barley-grasses as well as annuals

like poppies, mustards, delphiniums, iris, gladiolus, grape

hyacinths, muscari and clover grew thigh-high. Such a

carpet of vegetation would be an enormous attraction to

the herds of large steppe ungulates like Persian gazelle, onager, wild camels, and, at Douara, goats which were

probably hunted in the hills behind the cave.

The most common game animals found at Jerf

al-Ajla are gazelle and onager. These are the most

common fauna represented at Upper Pleistocene sites

in the steppe-desert of Syria. Camels are also found,

especially at El Kowm and Douara Cave. Surprisingly, the latter are not reported by Coon (1956) at Jerf al-Ajla though they are abundant in the deposits of Taniat al-Beidha, the Iron Age cave just across the

Ed Dou basin from Jerf al-Ajla, which Coon also excavated. Historical accounts record the abundance

of animal herds present in the steppes of central and northern Syria before their extinction in recent times.

One of the earliest accounts mentions abundant

herds of onager (Equus hemionus) near the upper Euphrates in the 4th century BCE (Xenophon) when

basin and provided fresh water for short periods (and even

then only near the lake's inlets). Most of the time, water in

the lake would have been brackish.2 Similarly, water of any kind was only available in the Ed Dou basin after precipitation on the steppe had filled natural hollows and basins or fallen

in the highlands, flowed down the Wadi Abiad, and spread out onto the Ed Dou. There it turned the wadi surface into a

green carpet of grass or, more recently, watered a barley crop

purposely planted to catch the runoff.

On the other hand, the Ed Dou benefits from its location at

the junction of ridges of the Southern Palmyrides where they converge with the Northern Palmyrides. The channels between

the Southern ridges represent a major corridor for the summer

migration of game out of the Syrian Desert (in the vicinity of the Damascus basin) into the better-watered highlands of

Jebels Abiad and Abu Rujme?n and farther north to the steppe

grasslands of northern Syria. Passage to the northern grasslands

is partially blocked by the mass of Jebels Abiad and its outlier

Jebel M'qeittaa. Jerf al-Ajla is situated adjacent to the major gap in these ridges where the Wadi Abiad opens onto the Ed Dou

giving access to the summer pasturage in the Abu Rujme?n

Jebel Abiad highlands.

onager were still common. By the mid 19th century

they were extinct in the Syrian steppe-desert. Today

the gazelle also are nearly extinct, though residue

populations may still exist in remote (and protected) areas of central Syria.

Although the herds that moved through the area and

the roots, seeds and nuts that appeared during the spring,

summer, and fall provided potential food resources, the

occupants of the central interior of Syria still needed to

find useable raw material to produce the basic technology

required in the Paleolithic. Fortunately, there were flint sources that met this need. Given some rudimentary skill

and experience, flint will provide sharp edges for simple cutting but it can also be shaped for a variety of other

tasks such as smoothing, chiseling, gouging, and scraping.

Fortunately for the visitors or the occupants, flint beds are

scattered thoughout the chalk and limestone-rich central .

Syria. High quality Eocene flint sources are situated

close to, and in many cases, in each of the major basins

listed above (Julig and Long 2001). Cretaceous sources

are also distributed throughout central interior of Syria,

though in some cases this flint variety has shown serious

internal stresses and fractures. Reflecting this, most of the

workshop sites are associated with uniformly high quality Eocene flint sources.

The Ed Dou is especially fortunate to be nearly surrounded

by rich flint beds. For example, just behind the Wadi Abiad gap and a few minutes' walk from Jerf al-Ajla there are multiple beds of both nodular and tabular flint exposed in the sides of a

short but deeply cut tributary of Wadi Abiad. Directly across the

Ed Dou basin from the Abiad gap there are flint beds exposed in the face of another deeply cut wadi. At the head of the Ed

Dou basin nodular flint erodes out of the base of the mesa-like

topographic feature called Jebel Tar. Along the steppe-desert surface where these and other outcrops have been exposed is a

pavement of debris from hundreds of generations of Paleolithic

visitors shaping flint in a variety of styles: bifaces from the Lower

Paleolithic, flakes and cores from the Middle Paleolithic, and

blades and cores from the Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic.

Why Did They Keep Coming to Jerf al-Ajla? Central Syria was, as we have seen, a seasonal steppe that

attracted herds of large and swift-moving herbivores to grasslands

throughout the region during moist springs. In summer, as the

grass of the Zone 4 steppe and especially the desert to the

south stopped growing and dried out, the herds moved out

of these broad expanses and into the cooler, better-watered


JerfaMJIa

\

^mmm^

>=4jâK?mi*? -?SSBStj :.*r- ̂.iisii^?ate?t?^''-*"

Looking north across the ed Dou basin toward a section of the central highlands. Jebel M'qeittaa

is the ridge on the left extending in front of the larger mass of Jebel Abiad behind. On the right is

Jebel Antar.

Nodular flint beds eroding from the side of Jebel Tar. The author's wife is holding one of the nodules.

highlands of the Central (Northern) Palmyrides and the steppe

grasslands beyond them on the northern Syria border near the

Euphrates River. Bedouin groups with their flocks continue this

arrangement today.

Gazelle and onager were seasonal visitors to the steppe

grasslands (Legge and Rowley 1987). A major route to Tadmor

(Palmyra) passes via Ain Qaryatein through an especially wide

channel in the braided Southern Palmyrides. This track would

have ended at the Ed Dou and Wadi Abiad basins and would

have taken the game into the higher elevations and grasslands north of the Palmyra region (Musil 1928) in the spring and then

reversed the direction as weather in the

north deteriorated and rains began to

fall further south in the Damascus and

Jordanian Desert areas. Apparently,

gazelle herds were large enough to

support several hunting groups even in

the recent past. There are ethnohistoric

records of gazelle hunting groups, called

the Solubba (Betts 1989; Betts 1998) or Sleyb (Moore, et al. 2000a), living in

the Arabian and Syrian deserts. Indeed

there are reports of gazelle hunting

being carried on in areas to the north

and west of Palmyra into historic times

by the Suteans (Betts 1989). The route to those pastures north

of Palmyra passes directly in front of

Jerf al-Ajla on the way to (and from) summer pastures via the Wadi Abiad.3

The gap created by Wadi Abiad

offers passage through the mountain

barrier of Jebels Abiad and M'qeittaa which block access to the highland

pasturage. The wadi itself drains the

large catchment of the Jebels Abiad

Abu Rujme?n segment of the Northern

Palmyrides and then passes through the Wadi Abiad gap directly into the

Ed Dou depression. There it promotes the growth of vegetation. This would

certainly have attracted migrating herds of game moving out of the desert

through the Ed Dou corridor, the main

route to the northeast, Palmyra, and

the Euphrates in historical times.

A major problem for ancient hunters was the maneuvering of swift and

wary wild animals within range of the

hunters* weapons?likely spears or

bows and arrows in the late and post Paleolithic. One solution in the open

steppe was the use of kites, desert

hunting structures with long converging walls of stone. Kites are well known in

the open deserts of Jordan and Syria, where they served as

corrals into which migrating herds were driven, and a number

of them have been discovered at the southern end of the Ed

Dou (Legge and Rowley-Conwy 1987). The narrow passes and canyons in the vicinity of Jerf al-Ajla would have served

the same function as kites without requiring construction.

Game congregated on the outside of the Wadi Abiad gap could

easily have been funneled through the narrow passes where

they could be ambushed. There are several forms of evidence

suggesting that historic and prehistoric hunters recognized the

value of Jerf al-Ajla for this type of intercept hunting including


^^^^^^^^^^^Hhh^'' ' '?rdSSjJr Jw ?*'-'^r & *j?* ' *. SÎB? **'": '. ?J?'-' .ffi?/: J^r

^^^^Hrv. jf'- -9'-'f -j?r^ *ijf ' " !*(#" ">r '"t-lr '<^?HH&a?l?E&.ii/''? ,.""'"" >???.

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Probable routes of gazelle and possibly onager migration from the desert to the steppe in the spring summer and returning in the fall (after After Legge and Rowley-Conwy (1987) with additions by the author). Satellite image from NASA Visible Earth image archive

(http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/viewj-ec.php?id=1410).

An example of a hunting blind overlooking the Wadi Abiad. Photo by Pat Julig.

the discovery of desert kites in the corridor between ridges of the Southern Palmyrides leading northeastward to the Ed Dou

depression and the presence of hunting blinds in, and in some cases overlooking, the Wadi Abiad.

As further evidence that this area was used to intercept herds of migrating game during the Pleistocene, we have found at

least ten rockshelters and caves that, in addition to Jerf abAjla, line up at the foot of Jebel M'qeittaa and overlook the Ed Dou basin. The similarity of surface material from these shelters with

industries from the deposits of Jerf

abAjla and other Paleolithic sites in the region confirms the antiquity and the importance of this area for

intercept hunting practices during the Paleolithic despite the absence

of a permanent water supply.

Notes 1. This work was suggested to me by

Professor Ralph Solecki. It was carried

out with the permission and generous

cooperation of Dr. Coon. It formed the

basis of my thesis at Columbia University

(Schroeder 1969). 2. Today wells in the Douara basin are the

major source of potable fresh water for

residents of the Palmyra basin, otherwise

bulk water in the basin comes from wells,

but they provide only brackish water.

3. The Wadi Abiad is said to be the

largest wadi system in Syria. It is clearly

visible in satellite images of Syria, the

Levant and even the Near East.

References Akazawa, T.

1979a Flint Factory Sites in Palmyra

Basin. Pp. 159-200 in The Paleolithic Site

of Douara Cave and Paleogeography of Palmyra Basin

in Syria. Part 11: Prehistoric Occurrences and Chronology in the Palmyra Basin, eds. K. Hanihara and T. Akazawa.

Bulletin No. 16. Tokyo: The University of Tokyo.

1979b Middle Paleolithic Assemblages from Douara

Cave. Pp. 1-30 in The Paleolithic Site of Douara Cave

and Paleogeography of Palmyra Basin in Syria. Part 11:

Prehistoric Occurrences and Chronology in Palmyra

Basin, eds. K. Hanihara and T. Akazawa. Bulletin No.

16. Tokyo: University of Tokyo.

Akazawa, T., Baba, H., and Endo, K.

1973 Investigation of the Douara Cave Site, 1970 Season.

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Syria. Part I, eds. H. Suzuki and F. Takai. Bulletin

No. 5. Tokyo: The University of Tokyo.

Akazawa, T, and Sakaguchi, Y. , eds.

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Palmyra Basin in Syria. Part IV: 1984 Excavations.

Bulletin No. 29. Tokyo: The University of Tokyo.

Betts, A.

1989 The Solubba: Non-pastoral Nomads in Arabia. Bulletin of the

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Betts, A., ed.

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Bo?da, E.

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el Tlel et d'El Meirah, Bassin d'El Kowm. Paris: Universit?

de Paris X.

Coon, C. S.

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Emberger, L., and Gaussen, H.

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Fortin, M.

1999 Syria, Land of Civilizations. Quebec: Mus?e de la Civilisation.

Fujimoto, T.

1979a The Problems on the Upper- and Epi-Paleolithic Assemblages

in the Palmyra Basin. Pp. 131-58 in The Paleolithic Site of

Douara Cave and Paleogeography of Palmyra Basin in Syria. Part

U: Prehistoric Occurrences and Chronology in the Palmyra Basin,

eds. K. Hanihara and T. Akazawa. Bulletin No. 16. Tokyo:

The University of Tokyo.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Schroeder conducted this investigation in the mid to late 60s as part of his Ph.D.

thesis research at Columbia University.,

Prof. Ralph Solecki, Supervisor. During his analysis and small re-excavation at

the cave he had the benefit of spending time working in Prof. Fran?ois Bordes'

lab (Universit? de Bordeaux). After

completing the study, he joined the

faculty at the University of Toronto, Bruce Schroeder

Scarborough. Meanwhile because the

inadequacies of Coons 3 week excavation and the author's own

tiny test were obvious, he requested permission to return to Syria

and continue work at the cave. In the late 60s however the Levant was in turmoil following the 1968 Arab-Israeli conflict. Syria was closed to North American archaeologists. Schroeder then

applied to Lebanon to survey for sites in the Northeast quadrant of interior Lebanon, the geographical segment closest to Syria. There

he discovered a number of caves and open sites in the Beqaa Valley and Anti-Lebanon Mountains near the border with Syria. After 5 seasons of survey and excavation of several Natufian and PPNA

sites, this research was cut short in 1974 for the next 15 years

(1974-1990) by the internal conflict in Lebanon.

In addition to excavations in Syria and Lebanon, Schroeder has

excavated in the Dordogne regjuon of France, New York State and

City (Staten Island) and in Ontario.

1979b Upper Paleolithic and Epi-Paleolithic Assemblages in the

Palmyra Basin. Pp. 77-103 in The Paleolithic Site of Douara

Cave and Paleogeography of Palmyra Basin in Syria. Part II:

Prehistoric Occurrences and Chronology in the Palmyra Basin,

eds. K, Hanihara and T. Akazawa. Bulletin No. 16. Tokyo:

The University of Tokyo.

Garrod, D. A. E., and Bate, D. M. A.

1937 The Stone Age ofMt. Carmel. Oxford: Clarendon Press,

General Organization of Remote Sensing (GORS)

1996 Syria. Space Image Atlas. Damascus: General Organization of

Remote Sensing.

Jagher, RM and Le Tensorer, J.-M.

1995 Rapport 1995. Le Pal?olithique d7 El Kowm (Syrie). Bale and Damascus: Universities of Bale and Damascus.

Julig, EJ., and Long, D.G.F.

2001 Flint Sourcing in Central Steppe Desert Region, Syria. Pp.

19-31 in Recherches Canadiennes sur la Syrie Antique, ?d. M.

Fortin, Toronto: Annual Symposium of the Canadian Society

for Mesopotamian Studies.

Le Tensorer, J.-M and Muhesen, S.

1997 Les premiers hommes du d?sert syrien. Paris: National Museum

of Natural History.

Legge, A. J., and Rowley-Conwy, P A.

1987 Gazelle Killing in Stone Age Syria. Scientific American

257:88-95.

Moore, A. T M, Hillman, G. O, and Legge, A. J.

2000 Village on the Euphrates: From Foraging to Farming at Abu

Hureyra. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Musil, A,

1928 Palmyrena. Volume 4. New York: American Geographical

Society.

Neuville, R.

1951 Le Pal?olithique et Le M?solithique du D?sert de Jud?e. Paris:

Masson et Cie.

Rust, A.

1950 Die H?lhlenfunde von Jabrud (Syrien). Neum?nster:

Karl Wachholtz.

Sakaguchi, Y.

1978 Palmyra Pluvial Lake: The Paleolithic Site of Douara Cave

and Paleogeography of Palmyra Basin. Pp. 5-28 in Syria, Part

I: Stratigraphy and Paleogeography in the Late Quaternary, eds.

K. Hanihara and Y. Sakaguchi. Bulletin No. 14. Tokyo: The

University o? Tokyo.

Schroeder, H, B,

1969 The Lithic Industries from Jerf Ajla and Their Bearing on the

Problem of a Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition. Ph.D.

Dissertation, Columbia University.


^^^ B 3.rri"l3.C US lll^^^^^^^^^^^^^l edited by Benjamin UI Porter ̂ ^^^H

The Rose Red City: A Review

of "Petra: Lost City of Stone"

I admit that I had low expectations when I visited Petra:

Lost City of Stone, the Cincinnati Art Museum and

the American Museum of Natural History, New York's

traveling exhibit. Having visited Jordan several years previ

ous, I spent two wonderful days hiking the ruined city. I

could not imagine how a museum exhibit could capture the

majesty of a site famous for its stunning architecture and

unique environmental setting. I was pleasantly surprised; the

exhibit is fantastic, demonstrating that there is much more

to Petra than rose, cliff-carved buildings. In venues across

North America, the exhibit introduces museum visitors to

the splendors of ancient Petra and the Nabataean society

who literally carved the city from bedrock while shuttling

goods between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean

Sea. Ancient writers suggest and archaeological evidence

confirms that Petra was an important economic base for

the Nabataeans and was quite possibly their capital

1 visited the exhibit at the Glenbow Museum in

Calgary, Canada. The modern rediscovery of Jordan frames the exhibit. Visitors* first glimpse of the show

is a large cut away of the Siq, the winding entrance

through which all visitors to Petra must pass; here they are invited to walk into the showroom and explore the

wonders of Petra. Past the entrance are remnants of the

nineteenth century rediscovery of Petra. Displayed on

the walls are the work of traveling Victorian artists such

as Lady Louisa Tenison, David Roberts, and L?on de

Laborde. The centerpiece is a copy of Frederic Edwin

Church's El Khasn? (1874), a large oil on canvas, of

which the original is currently part of another touring exhibit on Church's work. The exhibition likewise ends

with modern activities at Petra, documenting current

issues of preservation, and especially efforts to deal with

the ravages of flooding. The photography of Vivian

Ronay is also displayed; the photos of modern Bedouin

are interspersed with quotations from the likes of TE.

Lawrence, as are discussions on the social problems and

economic possibilities that face the Bedoul tribe, who

were relocated from Petra to a nearby town in 1986 to

develop the region for tourism. Today, the Bedoul act

Youthful male head. Khirbet Tannur, circa first century CE

Department of Antiquities, Amman, Jordan. (? Cincinnati Art Museum;

Photographer: Peter John Gates FBIPP, ARPS, Ashwell, U.K.)

as Petra's caretakers, serving as guides for tourists and

hired help for excavations.

The bulk of the exhibition concentrates on ancient

Petra and the Nabataeans themselves. Most displays are

devoted to specific thematic issues, such as sculpture, water management, and trade. Larger sections explore

other aspects of life at Petra in more detail, including

religion, daily life, Roman period Petra, and the post Roman settlement. The exhibit's aesthetically pleasing

presentation well facilitates the movement of visitors

through the exhibit. The initial mood of exploration and mystery grows as one moves deeper in the exhibit,

thanks to the displays and ambient music playing in

the background. In the Byzantine gallery, for instance,

Panteleimon Kartsonas's Panagiarion: Hymns to the

Virgin Mary plays quietly in the background. The individual displays are well conceived. Each

station features a general discussion on an element

of Nabataean life. Illustrating these discussions are

photographs, maps, and diagrams, as well as text panels

discussing individual artifacts. The displays move


^^M beyond the usual fetishization of artifacts and instead

^H concentrate on demonstrating how these artifacts help

^^? reconstruct antiquity. Many of the displays likewise

^^1 include discussions of how archaeologists know what

^H they know and do what they do?how they date

^H earthquakes, and read carbonized papyri, for instance.

^H The text is sometimes repetitive from display-to-display;

^H visitors are told frequently that the Nabataeans believed

^H in conspicuously displaying their wealth, for example.

^H This is one drawback of a museum exhibit that dispenses

^H with a strict narrative framework, as one cannot be

^H certain of the order in which visitors will view displays.

^H To my mind, repetition is a valuable pedagogic tool,

^H particularly in museum exhibitions. The non-narrative

^H approach is particularly successful for these traveling

^H museum displays that draw large crowds, as it prevents

^H people from congregating around an individual display,

^H contorting themselves to see artifacts past the mobs that

^H create bottlenecks around the glass cases.

^H As I alluded to earlier, the problem with any exhibition

^H on Petra is that the architectural and the environmental

^H settings are difficult to represent in museum venues. The

^H exhibitors resolve this issue using various multimedia

^H displays. Visitors can sit on benches and watch

^^m panoramic videos of the site projected simultaneously

^H on three screens in the middle of the exhibit. A three

^H dimensional landscape model successfully situates the

^H architecture into the environmental landscape of Petra.

^H Black and white photographs of Petra and its environs

^H fill up empty wall space throughout the display. Most

^H notable of the multimedia is an eight minute video that is

^H shown at the midpoint of the exhibit or at the end of the

^H exhibit. The video draws together the disparate displays

^H into a unified whole, helping visitors draw connections

^H between the various components of Nabataean life they

^H have already encountered. The video employs computer

^H graphics to reconstruct the urban center of Petra, and

^H demonstrates how the monumental rock-cut tombs were

^H sculpted into the cliff walls. The video is very good?

^H lacking the kitsch or propaganda typical of traveling

^H exhibitions. Especially nice is that the video is offered

^H at various stages in the tour. Unlike other exhibits, the

^H visitor is not required to sit and watch a movie prior to

^H entering the gallery.

^H Accompanying the traveling exhibit is Petra Rediscovered:

^H Lost City of the Nabataeans, a beautiful volume produced

^H by the Cincinnati Museum of Art under the general

editorship of Glenn Markoe. This is no mere catalogue, however. It is a valuable introduction to the site of Petra, its archaeology, and the civilization of the Nabataeans.

The volume is divided into two equal parts, the first

half exploring Nabataeans history and society, while the

second half focuses on Petra alone. Lavishly illustrated,

each of the sections consists of topical essays written by

experts in the field and will be useful to specialists and

non-specialists alike. Rumors that the volume may be out

of print are worrisome; we can only hope that Abrams

Books sees fit to order a second run.

The Glenbow Museum provided a number of other

programs and events associated with the Petra exhibit

but unique to Calgary. Throughout the Calgary run, an

evening lecture series was provided, including a lecture

on new discoveries from Petra by David Johnson and an

overview of the site from Larry Herr. Various other events

included singles nights, complete with lectures followed

by an apr?s-program of live music, family fun weekends

where children could make mosaics or architectural

drawings of Petra, and continuing education classes

such as belly dancing. My admission price included an

evening showing of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the film that first introduced Petra to a wider audience.

Also unique to the Glenbow was the interactive display for children, GSI: Glenbow Science Investigation. With

worksheets in hand, participants traveled between five

artifact stations: architecture, writing, ceramics, trade

goods, and coins and textiles. At each station, visitors

analyzed artifacts from different "sites," determined

the date and culture?Greek, Roman, Nabataean, or

Egyptian ?associated with each Petra-themed artifact.

At the end, participants could compare their results

with those provided at the Conclusions Stations. The

Glenbow Museum built on an already excellent traveling exhibit to create a vibrant and engaging museum

program revolving around Petra and the Nabataeans.

Hopefully the other venues visited by this exhibit will

likewise take advantage of this opportunity. Regardless, Petra: Lost City of Stone, in all of its venues, will be

enjoyed by experts and novices alike.

Kevin McGeough University ofLetnbridge

Note: 1.Petra: Lost City of Stone ran at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary from October 29, 2005 to February 20, 2006. The exhibition then traveled to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, running

from April 7, 2006 to February 18, 2007.


reviews

Chieftains of the Highland Clans? A History of Israel in the 12 th and 11th

Centuries B.C.

Efy Robert D. Miller II. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. 206.

Paper, $28.00. ISBN 0-8028-0988-X.

The title correctly describes this book; the subtitle does not.

It is all about Miller's "complex chiefdom" model, but it

does not come close to being a "history of early Israel."

What we have in this slender volume, adapted from the

author's recent University of Michigan dissertation, is the

following: (1) an anthropological exercise in theory, complete with jargon, which leans heavily on ideology (the "ideal

Israel") and construes the archaeological data very selectively

and sometimes inaccurately; (2) an analysis of settlement

patterns in the central highlands in the 12th?11th centuries

BCE, based largely on the author's own rather superficial

surface surveys done during a stay in Jerusalem, employing

"site catchment" models that have long since been proven

inapplicable to regions like Israel; and (3) an attempt to portray earliest Israel in socioeconomic terms as a "complex chiefdom"

with a hierarchical stratified society and several regional administrative centers.

What we do not have here is (1) an appreciation of the

vast body of previous scholarship on the subject, not even

the pioneering surveys of Finkelstein and other Israeli

archaeologists; (2) a competent survey of the entire range of

available archaeological data: no discussion or illustration of

settlement type and layout, house form, pottery, other artifacts,

demography, or ethnic identity; (3) data that might actually

support the author's theories, except his own surveys; (4) any

real grasp of the texts of the Hebrew Bible and how they may

confirm/contest the archaeological data.

This book is an attempt to capitalize on the author's doctoral

dissertation (published substantially as it was in 2002 as an

ASOR Annual). Yet, it is neither genuinely "popular," burdened

as it is with esoteric citations and anthropological jargon; nor

can it claim to make any substantial contribution to mainstream

scholarship, due to its use of idiosyncratic and inappropriate

theory. I predict that Israeli and American archaeologists, the

former of whom now dominate the field, will examine it briefly and dismiss it. Biblical scholars, especially the younger ones

enamored with postmodern paradigms, will probably find it

edited by Justin LewTov

baffling but may nevertheless hail it as "refreshing." Moreover,

this book is a monologue; it will do nothing for the dialogue between archaeologists and biblical scholars that we desperately need to write real histories of ancient Israel. Unfortunately, if

taken seriously, this book's misuse of the "sociological" approach

that is finally becoming useful in biblical studies would set that

school back many years.

An early statement gives away Miller's intentions:

The key to writing a critical postmodern history of Israel,

avoiding Rankean empiricism and na?ve Biblicism while

including a moderate postmodernist skepticism about the

approachability to any external reality, is the construction of

well-argued plausibilities, of possible pasts that are available

to further testing and examination and that challenge other

possible pasts, yielding better-informed reconstructions (p. 4).

Even supposing that this statement is intelligible and that it

represents a worthwhile goal, Miller himself acknowledges that

his "complex chiefdom" model and analysis are unlikely to be

successful:

Several issues, however, really render all conclusions

drawn from such analyses tendentious, and the tasks themselves

all but impossible (p. 22).

Miller's dauntless efforts in the face of such insurmountable

theoretical obstacles (not to mention the archaeological data,

which are usually intractable for the non-specialist) might have made for an acceptable dissertation?a sort of "test-run."

But most dissertations should not be published, especially in

truncated, "semi-popular" form. Despite the praise on the

dust jacket, this book does not exhibit sound archaeological method and is little more than a self-indulgent exercise in

speculation. Lawrence Stager's brief 1985 BASOR article, "The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel," says more

about appropriate models and the reality of early Israel than

Miller's entire book.

William G. Dever

Professor Emeritus

University of Arizona


I Democracy's Ancient

Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance.

By Daniel E. Fleming. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xxvii + 359; maps, glossaries, indexes. Cloth, $75.00, ISBN 0-521 82885-6.

rTnhe question of "primitive democracy" in ancient ?^?^

X Mesopotamia first arose amid the social and l9JH

intellectual tumult of World War II, and since then ?

the topic has lingered uneasily at the margins of the |^S^5

study of the ancient Near East. Though looking Hj^fflS for democracy in any historical period in greater |NH^9E

Mesopotamia may well be an ill-conceived project, jH^H a variety of evidence does document collectives

^^^^| engaging in political action at various levels. By MHi^l ignoring this material, we run the risk of neglecting a significant part of the dynamics of coercion and negotiation that both conferred legitimacy on and subverted the self-stylized autocrats of the Near East. The present volume addresses

these problems anew by concentrating on one particularly rich

and promising body of material: the royal archives from Old

Babylonian/MB II Mari (Tell Hariri). The question is, however, was there any relationship between the sociopolitical world of Mari and the advent of Athenian democracy, a historically and culturally circumscribed phenomenon that is itself still the

subject of considerable debate? A genetic model directly linking alleged ancestor and descendent here would strain credulity at

best. Fortunately, Fleming's concern is rather to explicate the

complex factors and contexts of corporate decision-making in

second millennium Syria-Mesopotamia and to thereby raise

questions that others might pose to material from ancient

Greece and elsewhere.

Fleming's work begins with a solid, readable introduction in which he outlines the history of the publication and

study of the Mari texts, sketches the technical problems of

understanding the corpus, and surveys the political history of ancient Mari (cf. Heimpel 2003: 3-172). He persuasively argues for the use of analytical categories that derive from

the precise language of texts, our informants on the past (cf. Kraus 2004: 54-59). By addressing basic information about

the nature of his source material and approach, Fleming

underscores his express interest in reaching a wide audience.

Three principal sections comprise the substance of the study. Each section isolates a particular axis of governance vis-?

vis collective identification, organization, and agency: tribe,

land, and town.

In the first section, "The Tribal World of Zimri-Lim,"

Fleming addresses the issue of ancient tribal categories and

the political ramifications of tribal modes of identification

and organization among intersecting mobile and sedentary

populations. He demonstrates some awareness of the problems

with the concept "tribe," which in practical terms he views

as a culturally distinct kinship network (cf. Kraus 2004:

28-45). Eschewing evolutionary models, Fleming grounds his

analysis in the ancient terminologies of tribal identification,

?m,M.;* ..,.. leadership, and administration. Most innovative

B ? here is Fleming's explication of the fundamental

M ideological differences between the structures of the

p3HH|; Sim'alite and Yaminite tribal confederacies and the

SBlpBI linguistic reflexes of those differences. Given the

^BBB Sim'alite pedigree of the last king of Mari, Zimri

^Hjemk Lim, Fleming argues that in Mari we have, in effect,

^^^H| the archives of a tribal king who had to contend

flHHff with a complex array of tribal constituencies. While

Fleming's is not the only possible interpretation of the data, his thoroughness will provide a basis for ongoing discussion of the complex nexus of tribal identities and political structures in this period (cf. Streck 2002: 175-82).

The second section, "The Archaic State and the m?tum

'Land'," addresses the highest unit of regional political

organization, the "land." After discussing some theories about

the archaic state, Fleming presents the "land" as the effective

polity capable of negotiating war and peace in the Mari period. This entity was typically named for a capital city ("land of

Eshnunna"), a constituent population ("land of [the tribe]

Yamutbal"), or a coalition ("land of Zalmaqum") and was

composed of administrative districts. Fleming argues that, in

this period, political geography was defined more by population than by modern cartographic fictions about territory.

Settlements of widely varying size and function punctuated the landscape of the Mari period, and the third principal section

thus addresses "The Collective and the Town." Here Fleming addresses how towns functioned in this political environment

and, more specifically, how town-centered ideologies expressed

collective action. For example, the anthropomorphized town

itself or a town's collective inhabitants ("the Tuttulites") appear as actors. Within this schema, elders, "heads," and various

types of fluidly defined, ad hoc assemblies also gave voice. The

Mari archives document Imar (Meskene), Tuttul (Tell Bi'a), and UrgiS (Urkesh, Tell Mozan) as three Syrian towns with

particularly strong collective traditions that may have had

antecedents in the third millennium.


Fleming's judicious command of the primary sources will

surprise no one familiar with his work on the cuneiform

tablets from Emar. The translations in the present volume

are generally of very high quality as well as quite readable (cf.

Heimpel 2003: passim). Only a few translation problems have

crept into the manuscript: omissions from the translation (pp.

73, 88) or Akkadian text (pp. 118, 120), arguable renderings

of idiom (pp. 168, 203), and a few confusing interpretations

(pp. 50, 54). Fleming excerpts from a first-millennium proverb

(p. 204) cited only as K.8282, which was edited as "Counsels

of Wisdom" 31-35 (for context, see Lambert 1960: 96-106). Akkadian text passages and discussions of technical points

of text, lexicon, and grammar are wisely consigned to the

copious notes. Fleming's research was remarkably thorough,

especially with respect to the abundant secondary literature

produced by the French publication team. It would have

been interesting, however, for him to consider the work of

Michael Streck. In a monograph and a series of articles,

Streck has recently investigated the linguistic, onomastic,

and socioeconomic facets of Amorite nomadism in the Mari

period, often differing significantly from the French team

with respect to philological analysis and interpretation (for

bibliography, see Streck 2002: 209). Several features of the book aim to expand its readership.

The maps are clear and handsomely reflect the topography of

Syria-Mesopotamia. However, none of the region's geographic

features is marked, and the precise location of more than a

dozen towns is misleadingly specific. The glossaries of ancient

terms are handy for quick reference, and more nuanced

discussions are readily accessible through the subject index.

The index of letters, royal inscriptions, and other documents

translated and discussed will ensure that this work is quickly

integrated into the study of the early second millennium. The

book is generally well edited, despite a few errors of typography and omission (for p. 118, note 18, add Laess0e and Jacobsen

1990 to the bibliography).

Though Fleming's approach and analysis are heavily

philological, he attempts to make use of archaeological,

anthropological, and ethnographic research where appropriate.

Most refreshing is the degree to which Fleming has made

problems of theory and method explicitly integral to his

study. This approach may rankle some readers, but Fleming's

awareness of broader issues will undoubtedly help keep Near

Eastern studies actively engaged in, and therefore relevant to,

the wider discussions of the humanities and social sciences.

Fleming also exerts much effort to clarify and justify the

structure of his study. The repetition of key points aids the

transitions between sections but occasionally makes for a

tedious continuous read. Outside of Assyriology, a number of

other fields are likely to profit from consulting this work, among ̂ ^^^| them the study of the Iron Age in the Levant, the Early Bronze ^^^H

Age in northern Syria-Mesopotamia, and fourth- and third- ^^^H millennium southern Mesopotamia, as well as anthropological ^^^H archaeology in the Near East more generally. ^^^H

In conclusion, we may fairly ask if the whole notion of an ^^^H

"exclusionary" (pp. 177-80), autocratic mode of political ^^^H control in ancient Syria-Mesopotamia is not merely a straw

^^^H man constructed from only the most literal reading of elite ^^^^| literature and material culture. Nevertheless, the present work ^^^H is a corrective to political histories that recount only the great ^^^^| deeds of great men. In the end, the scholarly community can

^^^^| be grateful to Fleming for advancing such a thoughtful and ^^^^| thought-provoking study. This is an ambitious synthesis that ^^^H deserves to be widely read and discussed. ^^^H

Matthew T. Rutz ^^H

University of Pennsylvania ^^^H

REFERENCES ^H Heimpel, W ^^^^|

2003 Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation, with Historical ^^^^H

Introduction, Notes, and Commentary. Mesopotamian ^^^^H Civilizations 12. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. ^^^^|

Kraus, W. ^^H

2004 Islamische Stammesgesellschaften: Tribale Identit?ten im ^^^^H Vorderen Orient in sozialanthropologischer Perspektive. ^^^^H Vienna: B?hlau. ^^^^H

Laess0e, J., and Jacobsen, T. ^^^^B 1990 Siksabbum Again. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 42:127-78. ^^^^|

Lambert, W G. ^^H

1960 Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ^^^^H

Streck, M. E ^^H

2002 Zwischen Weide, Dorf und Stadt: Sozio-?konomische ^^^^H Strukturen des amurritischen Nomadismus am Mittleren

^^^^H

Euphrat. Baghdader Mitteilungen 33:155-209. ^^^^H


W?8M%? ess^S?Ss^ sA&s**^. GSSF"**?** W& *Sf W*& JPB&. W??M? ?I?M? W * C ^ W*$P wL B Iwl ?En

The Destruction of Palestinian Archaeological

Heritage: Saffa Village as a Model by Salah H* al-Houdalieh, Al Quds University

Between 1967 and 1993, during the era of complete

Israeli civilian and military occupation of the West

Bank and Gaza, Palestinians were unable to manage

and protect the archaeological and cultural heritage of their

lands. With the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the subsequent Interim Agreement (Oslo II) in 1995, the

Palestinian National Authority was established and with

it the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Archaeology

(PMTA). This marked the first time that Palestinians were

officially responsible for the management, protection, and

preservation of cultural heritage sites. The PMTA staff has

made steady progress towards protecting and maintaining

its archaeological heritage. However, this effort has been

limited by both internal and external circumstances.

Main Road '"?n* Paved Road ^"^m Separation Wall

(^_t Archaeological Site ^""\_ Contour Line ' Wadi

The location of Saffa. 1516-1917 ce) (al-Houdalieh 2003: 4-8;

Finkelstein and Lederman 1997: 138-160). 1. Saffa -the old village area: Roman, Byzantine, Early and Late Islamic period. 2. Eth-Thahir:

Roman and Byzantine period. 3. ed-Dair: Byzantine, Umayyad, and

Ayyubid period. 4. Bir Lemsama: Roman and Byzantine period. 5.

Abu-Fallan: Roman and Byzantine period. 6. Bir el-Baten: Roman and

Byzantine period. 7. Khirbet el-Lauz: Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and

Early Islamic period. 8. El-Ku'ma: Roman and Byzantine period. 9. Badd

Isa: Middle Bronze Age, Iron Age, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine

period. 10. Khirbet Urn eth-Thinein: Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic period. 11. Khirbet Kureikur: Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine,

Ayyubid, and Early Ottoman period. 12. Kreesina: Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic period. 13. Khirbet ed-Daliya: Roman, Byzantine, Early

Islamic, and Ayyubid period. 14. Khirbet Kafr Lut: Persian, Hellenistic,

Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, and Late Islamic period. 15. Khirbet Huriya: Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Ayyubid and

Mamluk period. 16. Fa'ush: Roman and Byzantine period. 17. Najmet el-Houdali: Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Period. 18.

Khirbet Baten Hassan: Byzantine and Early Islamic Period, 19. Khirbet

es-Suana: Roman and Byzantine period. 20. Hallaba: Hellenistic, Roman,

Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, and Late Islamic period.


The village of Saffa, located near Ramallah, is a case study that exemplifies the current state of destruction and looting of

archaeological and cultural heritage in the West Bank. Saffa's

cultural heritage includes human remains, artifacts, buildings, ancient roads, terraces, and cultural earth accumulations. For

decades, archaeological and historical sites in Saffa have been

vandalized and looted and many of the remains were destroyed without compassion, rendering them useless to archaeologists

for studying the previous cultures. Because of the escalation of

this phenomenon in Saffa, we wanted to identify the character, scope, and motives behind the destruction of Palestinian

archaeological and cultural heritage and to stem its diffusion.

The Location and History of Saffa Saffa is in the West Bank close to the Green Line,

approximately 16 km west of Ramallah and nearly 22 km

northwest of Jerusalem. The village covers several hills over an

area of about 14,000 dunums at an average altitude of 350 m.

Nearly nine percent of Saffa's land is inhabited, with the rest

used mainly for different kinds of cultivation. The climate of

the village is a typically mild Eastern Mediterranean one.

The social composition of the village consists of several clans

that moved to Saffa from different places during the last few centuries. In 1922, the population was about 495 persons, in

1997 about 2857 (al-Houdalieh 2003: 1-4) and presently the

local council estimates the population to be 3100 persons (Mr. S. Sh. Mansur, personal communication, February 2006).

For almost 2000 years Saffa has been inhabited and has

occupied a strategic point of control over the surrounding area. During the Roman period, the location of Saffa proved effective in managing the caravans that connected Jerusalem

with the coast. According to a 2001 field survey conducted

under the supervision of the author, the region surrounding the

village includes 20 archaeological sites dating from the Middle

Bronze Age (2000-1550 BCE) through the Ottoman period. There are several factors threatening archaeological

heritage in Saffa including looting, urban development, the Separation Wall, farming and agricultural reforms,

misuse of the archaeological features, and the surrounding Israeli settlements.

Looting Looting of ancient sites has become widespread all over the

world (The International Council of Museums 2005: http:// icom.museum/traffic.html). Such events are reported daily by official and private institutions and by individuals. The looting of antiquities is not a new event?it was practiced in Egypt and documented in the Amherst papyrus dating from ca. 1134 BCE.

The dramatic loss of cultural property in many countries during the past few decades threatens to wreck our archaeological

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heritage. The continuous destruction of sites erases very

important parts of ancient cultures and local people. In Palestine, different regional antiquities laws have

determined the criteria for excavating archaeological sites and the proprietorship of antiquities. Various laws governing the

antiquities of Palestine, from the 1929 Palestinian Antiquities Law to Jordanian and Israeli antiquities laws to the newly

proposed Palestinian Antiquities Law, have attempted to

restrict illegal excavations and impose penalties on those who

conduct such excavations.

It is clear that the most important aim of relevant local and

international laws (in particular the Hague Convention of 1954 and the UNESCO/ ICOMOS conventions and principles) is to deter and prevent the pillaging, destruction, or demolition

of archaeological sites and to protect the integrity of cultural

heritage so it may be bequeathed to future generations. These

local and international antiquity laws and conventions are

theoretically the protective framework for cultural heritage, but the non-enforcement of the laws by responsible officials

and individuals must be considered the final nail in the coffin

for the preservation of cultural heritage. The previous laws will remain in effect until the newly proposed antiquities law is

passed by the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Based on the field study conducted in Saffa during 2005, it is clear that the looting of artifacts in the village started in 1970s by Palestinians, mostly from the Hebron area. The

robbers worked in gangs, one consisting of seven males from

one extended family, and were interested in collecting all

kinds of archaeological objects for their own profit. They focused their illicit work at many abandoned archaeological sites around the village, namely Khirbet eLLauz, Bir eLBaten,

eLKu'ma, Badd Isa and Khirbet ed-Daliya. In the beginning, the robbers chose dry periods to facilitate their digging and

worked at night; however, they soon realized that very few

people were wandering around the excavated sites and began

working during the day and into the evenings.

They were armed with traditional excavation tools?shovels,

pickaxes and trowels?to unearth rock cut tombs last touched

several thousand years ago. Often, these gangs dug through the accumulated deposits against the entrance fa?ade and

destroyed the door blockage to open the tomb. They waited

for the air in the tomb to exchange with fresh air, then slipped into the tomb with candles or kerosene lamps. Once inside

the tomb, they gathered the visible objects in a safe corner

and then they searched for other valuables. Many times, any skeletal remains discovered in loculi, niches carved into the

walls, were dumped in heaps inside the tomb. The earth inside

the tomb would be hauled outside and sifted to collect coins,

beads, scarabs, and other small items.

Then the robbers sifted through the materials accumulated in the center of the tomb and attempt to find the "middle pit,"


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traditionally the location where skeletal remains and grave

goods are transferred after the bodies have been defleshed by natural processes in the loculi (Abu M. Y. Nasser, personal communication, January 2006). Usually, the robbers would leave the rock cut tombs open with broken pottery and skeletons scattered across the tomb?effectively destroying the in situ archaeological record forever.

In 1989, nearly two years after the beginning of the first

intifada, a small gang of local inhabitants resumed digging archaeological remains at various locations in the center of the

old village in Saffa. The preferred areas for excavation belonged to several owners, and it is likely that the robbers made an oral

agreement with each owner before they began excavating on his land. Usually, the landowner sends a member of his family to

participate in the looting in order to control the number of finds and to ensure the landowner's fair share of the finds. These unauthorized excavations were mostly conducted overtly and

soon many of the locals knew about the archaeological materials

that had already been looted and subsequently sold (personal communication with Abu E. Sh. Ahmad, March 2006.).

Since the start of the second intifada in 2000, the plundering of archaeological sites has flourished again in the village. About 12 gangs, armed with digging equipment and metal detectors,

have spread over the larger sites in Saffa, especially those dated to the Roman period, and started to loot the undisturbed sections of the sites. One of these gangs, consisting of four

people from the same family, used a bulldozer for nearly two weeks in their search for antiquities at Khirbet el-Lauz. The bulldozer indiscriminately damaged an area of about 900 sq

m by plowing the earth to a depth of nearly 2 m. This resulted in the destruction of the weih stratified layers at the site and further damaged numerous architectural remains. After the

looting, the area was backfilled and leveled for farming.

In January and February 2006, personal interviews were

conducted with local residents involved in the looting and showed that 68 people (approximately 2 percent of the total

population) have excavated illegally in the village region during the last four decades. The majority of the looters (approximately 59 percent of the total number) are between 26 and 40 years old.

Approximately 12 percent of the robbers are university graduates and 72 percent of them are married. Roughly 23 percent of

them are in good economic status, 16 percent are poor, and

61 percent are in moderate economic status. Approximately

36 percent of them have looted one or two times, 32 percent three or four times, and 30 percent more than four times. The

professional looters constituted 16 percent of the total number

and half of them are between 31 and 35 years old. The looters are divided into two main categories, professionals

and amateurs. Professional looters are characterized by astonishingly

high levels of experience in field archaeology, they tend to work in

small teams and spend several days staking out archaeological sites of suspected value, looking for pottery sherds, dressed rock, stone cut marks, ancient building traces, or cultivated and wild

trees flourishing in rocky areas with a minimal amount of earth

accumulation. The professional looters often return to the looting

site at random intervals in order to ensure that all valuables have

been collected. Their extensive fieldwork experience enables them to classify the objects by periods and to assess the monetary worth of the objects. To keep updated about the antiquities market, the

professional looters obtain the last published antiquities catalogs, particularly those dealing with coins.

Amateur looters are marked by poor archaeological fieldwork

experience and therefore tend to loot in a more spontaneous

and haphazard manner. Teams of amateur looters often work in

relatively large gangs, consisting mainly of youths attempting to

Statistic of antiquities hunters in Saffa Village

Individuals Age Professionals Illegal Excavation Participation Economic Status Marital Status Education

>4 3-4 1-2 Good Moderate Low Married Single Secondary > <

16-20

21-25

26-30 11 10

31-35 16 10 14 14

36-40 18 18 16

41-45

46-50

Over 51

Total 68 11 21 22 25 16 42 49 19 60

The definition of excavation participation is digging in the same spot for one hour or more.

104 NEAR FASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 69:2 (2006)

imitate the strategies of the professional groups. However, the

amateur groups often excavate quickly and leave a site after a

short time in order to find a new one. Because they are afraid

of not receiving an adequate price from foreign antiquities

dealers, they often have one of the local professional looters act as intermediary.

During the past two decades, the illicit antiquities trade

has flourished in Saffa as part and parcel of the Palestinian

territories. The local robbers, especially the professional gangs, have connections with some Palestinian antiquities dealers

and middlemen. The vast majority of the illegally sold items, which are immediately exported to Israel or abroad, disappear forever because they may have changed hands several times or are taken far away from their indigenous cultural context.

It is practically impossible to get accurate statistics on looted

items from the village and its adjacent surrounding, but Abu L. A. N., a local professional looter, estimates that over 2500

archaeological objects have been sold, about 75 percent being Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine coins (Abu L. A. NL,

personal communication, February 2006). Based on personal travels in many villages of the Ramallah governate and

interviews with local residents in August and September, 2005, I concluded that looting of archaeological sites and illicit trade

of antiquities is a widespread phenomenon in this region and in

other villages, like Beit Ur ehTahta, where it is sometimes more

dangerous than in Saffa.

The main causes of illegal looting are economic deprivation and poor law enforcement (Blumt 2002; Maniscalco 2005: 97). Since the Israeli occupation in 1967, the Palestinian national

economy has been based mainly on employment in Israel's

private and public sectors. When the first intifada broke out in 1987, this employment became less secure because

of strikes called by the intifada leadership, curfews, internal

closures, and the sealing off of the Palestinian territories

imposed by Israeli military forces (Blumt 2002). During a

five-year period, from April 1988 to April 1993, there were

about 100 days of complete closure (United Nation, Fifty first session, 1996) and in the next six years this number

escalated to 436 days, of which 323 were working days

(United Nations, Fifty-forth session, 1999). The Israeli closures had adverse effects on the income of

Palestinian workers and caused a remarkable increase in the

level of unemployment among Palestinians, especially after

the gradual replacement of Palestinians by foreigners (Blumt

2002). During the current intifada, the rate of unemployment among Palestinians has run as high as 60 percent; the majority of Palestinians are no longer allowed to work in Israel, as a

result more than half of Palestinians in the territories fall below

the poverty line. The deterioration of economic conditions

encouraged the unemployed to loot and to sell the artifacts to whomever would buy them (Yahya 2005: 70). In December

2000, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) reported that only a couple of archaeological sites were illegally dug a month, but

since then the number has been multiplied at least eightfold (Blumt 2002). On the other hand, according to Dr. Hamdan

Taha, Director of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage (DACH), looting during the current

intifada increased an estimated 30-40 percent (Dr. Hamdan

Taha, personal communication, February 2006). The inadequacy of current law enforcement in the

Palestinian territories has paved the way for robbers to steal

from archaeological sites whenever and whatever they desire.

Bloom stated that Israeli archaeologists accuse the Palestinians

of being unable to protect the sites that lie under their control?

Areas A and B, where the looting is most common (Bloom

2005). The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Archaeology

(PMTA) rejects these claims and points out that the looting is concentrated in Area C, which includes around half of the

archaeological sites of the West Bank and which is not under

Palestinian control (Bloom 2005: http://www.ww4report.com/

node/810/print). Some observers attribute the looting of these

archaeological sites to the presence of the Israeli military troops that impede Palestinian access to them (Schulman 2002). The

PMTA estimates that about 200,000 antiquities from the OPT were looted annually during the twenty-two year period from

1967 to 1992. Since 1992, these estimates have been revised

to a total of ca. 120,000 items per annum (Chamberlain 2005).

Development Fundamental changes are taking place yearly in Saffa as part of

planned development and construction projects that include new

residential and commercial buildings, roads, and infrastructure

projects such as water and sewer pipelines. Construction and

development projects in the village, especially in the ancient

areas, have already adversely impacted parts of the observed

and concealed archaeological heritage. It is assumed that if

this nonstop phenomenon continues without limit, the original character of Saffa will be obliterated in the near future.

Construction The local architectural heritage is significant evidence of

ancestral existence and reflects internal and cross-cultural

exchanges. Architecture forms an excellent source of knowledge

about the past because many architectural elements have a

symbolic value in their local communities and also provide a

sense of identity, history, and memory (Bacon 1997: 3-6). The

local architectural heritage in Palestine, especially from the

Ottoman period, is related to agriculture, social concepts, and

social complexes in which the extended family was dominant.

The gradual shifting of these factors during the second half of the

last century played a significant role in minimizing this tradition.


This heritage has been largely neglected over the past several

decades, but recently this area is beginning to attract attention

and funding from private institutions and individuals, both local

and international. There are fragmented efforts to research,

document, and implement protection and rehabilitation projects,

but a clear and generally accepted policy to guide present and future construction and tie such projects, completely or partly,

within their original environment is lacking.

During the late Ottoman period (1750-1917 ce), the

domestic dwellings in Saffa were approximately 350 m X 125 m. The houses from this period, in particular the courtyards, were designed to form adjacent construction blocks separated from each other by narrow unpaved pathways. Members of extended families shared the same courtyard and they did not

allow others to use the space in order to maintain seclusion and

social privacy. Thus, the courtyards were spatially organized

according to the degree of blood relationship to the family

patriarch. The residential buildings can be divided into three main groups according to their design, materials, and location:

house {el'dar), hut (es-sakefa) and upstairs room (illayeh). The size of these residential spaces varied according to the size of the family and their economic status. The majority of houses

consisted of a simple square structure built from roughly hewn

stones, often robbed from older buildings or quarried locally. The walls of Ottoman period houses are massive, about

90 cm thick, and designed to support the load of the heavy

ceilings. The open areas between building units were used

mainly by women for their daily domestic activities, such as

cooking, washing clothes, and grinding grains with basalt stone

querns. Many of the houses had a single entrance and consisted of two-stories: the lower story, used for livestock and storing

agriculture-related equipment, and the upper story, divided into two sections by a series of relatively high storage bins served as

the living and domestic storage space. Among the traditional

buildings in the village there are several architecturally interesting and noteworthy houses, some with different styles of

carved lintels, a few with inscribed foundation slabs fixed either in the door arch or high in the front fa?ade, and others with

beautiful entranceways flanked by well-dressed stone columns and stone seats (al-Houdalieh 2006: 1-30).

Currently, many factors that helped to protect the architectural

heritage in Saffa are changing dramatically for the worse. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the architectural heritage

was not under an immediate threat; however, beginning in the 1950s the situation began to change. With increased political, social, and economic turmoil, coupled with the pressures of

demographic growth, many families started to construct new

houses around the village core, effectively leaving the old ones

abandoned and neglected. Without adequate protection and

restoration, these buildings fell into disrepair and their structural

integrity deteriorated. It is thought that the majority of the

owners were, and still are, less concerned with the preservation

of the buildings and more interested in the economic value of

the land itself. During the last three decades, the condition and

character of the old village has fundamentally changed. The movement of construction from the periphery to the village center has continued unabated because the master plan for the

development of the village has not been sufficiently modified,

despite the increase in population.

The increased construction in the village center has taken two

forms: protection/rehabilitation and destruction/demolition. Rehabilitation has occurred on a limited scale for both

commercial or residential purposes but without consideration

of Article 18(d) of the 1929 Palestinian Antiquities Law, which states "no person shall make alterations, additions or

repairs to any historical monument, without the permission

of the Director" (National Campaign for Protection of the

Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 1993: 15). Those buildings that have been rehabilitated often were renovated using

modern construction processes that did not mirror the original

architectural style. A common rehabilitative effort involves the extensive use of cement to fill gaps in the stone courses of exterior walls and repair interior facades, thus creating new, or

sealing original, openings. Another common rehabilitative effort

involves adding superstructures or rooms, often resulting in

changes to the interior floor plan. In general, these rehabilitative activities have been undertaken without consideration of the

historical or aesthetical value, the location of the structure, or

the surrounding environment of the buildings. Too often the

rehabilitation work is done in violation of the Antiquities Law

and without consideration of proper architectural rehabilitation

processes due to a lack of financial means, skills, or awareness.

In addition to "rehabilitative construction" within the village, many buildings of architectural heritage value were demolished

to create space for modern constructions. This activity is in

conflict with Article 18(c) of the 1929 Palestinian Antiquities Law that states "no person shall demolish an historical

(archaeological) monument or pull down or remove any part

thereof, without the permission of the Director" (National

Campaign for Protection the Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 1993: 15). Based on personal observations in Saffa, most of the

owners are completely destroying the old buildings, leveling the area, hauling the materials away, and sometimes digging to

bedrock in order to prepare for the new houses. Once the former structure is demolished, the landowner will either apply for a

construction license or simply construct the house illegally. If the landowner applies for a construction license, a cadastral

map is made by a licensed surveyor, plans are drafted by an

architect, and necessary documents are submitted to the Ministry of Local Government, Department of Licensing and Planning and to other pertinent departments, including the Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. Each department has


^m??????????i.

a particular jurisdiction and distinct scope of responsibility in this process and ultimately transmits its comments and

approvals back to the Department of Licensing and Planning. For the Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in

particular, a department representative must visit the proposed

construction site to evaluate the current situation; however,

the representatives usually report no finds and make a positive

recommendation for the proposed construction. In some cases,

the landowner applies for permission while his old house is still

standing with the result that the Department of Antiquities and

Cultural Heritage supervises a salvage excavation at the expense

of the landowner. The department representative documents

the excavation and its adjacent physical environment using locus sheets, drawings, and photographs before he submits

his report to a special departmental committee for an official

decision. Based on the construction law, anyone who submits

the required documents for a construction license is not

allowed to start building unless he receives a written and signed

permit because submission of the required documents is not

considered a permit for construction.

Tragically, during 2004 and 2005 Saffa's local council destroyed three of the most important courtyards in the village?an area of

nearly 3 dunums. The courtyards included 16 historic residences, 2 traditional olive presses, and associated features like cisterns, bread ovens, and huts. The land opened up by the destruction

was used for the local council's center, an addition to the village mosque, and for the construction of a new school.

Based on the author's field research in 35 villages in the

Ramallah province during 2004-2005, historical buildings are

suffering from frenetic development and construction, which

has largely changed the historical landscape of the villages and

the region. Therefore, it is recommended that all traditional

buildings (or the most valuable of them) should be protected and

maintained before they deteriorate or collapse. It is worth noting that if such buildings are destroyed and replaced by new concrete

houses without any limit, then the original identity and character

of the village will be completely erased in the very near future.

This does not mean that development in Saffa should be frozen in

order to make a cult of the past, but there should be an intelligent balance between historical preservation and modernity.

Road and Water Pipeline Construction:

Proper urban development requires that construction projects

be designed to avoid damage to aspects of cultural heritage.

Ideally, a specialized group should conduct an assessment of

important archaeological and historic features and deposits that

may be adversely impacted by the proposed construction. Where an unavoidable danger to cultural heritage properties exists, the

project supervisor should plan for salvage excavations, carried

out by qualified technicians, to document the endangered areas. For example, when cutting trenches for water pipes, it is

necessary to conduct test pits along the proposed pipeline route

to determine whether substantial cultural heritage materials

exist in the area. Ultimately, where cultural heritage materials

are discovered, the entire trench should be excavated under

the supervision of an archaeologist before the work of laying

pipes continues.

In the last few decades, a series of infrastructure developments were carried out by individuals and official committees both

within and around the village. Along the roads there are

significant cultural heritage resources, including traditional

buildings, archaeological sites, cultural heritage landscapes, caves, cisterns, and cemeteries, that reflect the various cultures

that have occupied this region throughout time. The original road network consisted of a main street running east-west

and dividing the ancient urban area into two parts, as well as

several pathways connecting the residential areas with the main

street and the mosque plaza. The main street, 3 m wide, was

paved with asphalt in the 1970s and the secondary pathways,

measuring 1.5-2 m wide, were left unpaved at this time. In 2001, the Saffa local council undertook a project to widen the roads

in order to reduce problems associated with Israeli restrictions

on Palestinian travel Specifically, the widening of the roads was

intended to compensate for the inability of Palestinian residents

from nearly 40 villages west of Ramallah to freely travel on the

highway that connects Jerusalem with Tel Aviv. Furthermore, this road construction project was designed to meet future

demographic growth in the region and to accommodate the

increased number of private cars using the roads.

The project was to resurface and reconstruct approximately

4 km of internal streets and open about 8 km of agricultural roads in the vicinity of Saffa. This work was started without

permission, prior documentation, or supervision by pertinent

officials, including representatives from the Department of

Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. It is worth noting that

the most damage from widening the roads occurred around

curves, especially in the old part of the village. In general, the

actions of the local council have resulted in the destruction of numerous cultural heritage proprieties (despite the resistance

of several landowners), including ten traditional houses from

the late Ottoman period, four courtyard gateways, three rock

cut cisterns dated to the Roman period, and approximately 700 m of terraces in nearly 30 locations.

Additionally, new agricultural access roads were

constructed to facilitate the movement of farmers to their

fields. Typically, these roads followed the traces of ancient

pathways which were narrow, partially paved with pebbles and lined by large stones. These agricultural access roads

originally connected several nearby settlements during the

Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. The existing remains of these pathways were leveled and covered with a

relatively thick layer of base material approximately 3 m wide.


Finally, the construction of these roads has demolished and

adversely impacted the agricultural heritage of the village by uprooting a significant number of olive trees and impacting wildlife habitats adjacent to the roads.

In the past, the inhabitants of Saffa depended on ancient

rock-cut cisterns, which are scattered all over the area, for

collecting and storing rainwater. The cisterns are of different

sizes and shapes but all have a relatively thick layer of plaster (consisting of lime, grog, gravel, and sand) coating their interiors. Usually, the rainwater is collected from the roof and the beaten-earth surface around the cistern. In the 1980s,

Saffa began to suffer water shortages due to a combination of

population growth and low rainfall. The inhabitants began to restore ancient cisterns or construct new ones in response to

these shortages, but greater domestic consumption of water,

particularly due to increased use of flush toilets, showers, and garden irrigation, exceeded the capacity provided by the local cistern system. The Saffa local council, in collaboration

with five neighboring local councils, began laying the first water mains from a water station northeast of Latrun. In

Saffa, the contractor dug the trenches along the main street

at a depth of between 40 and 120 cm; the trenches along the

pathways were 80 cm on average. The width of the trenches varied between 60 and 90 cm. According to Mr. F. A. Mansur

(personal communication, January 2006), the pipe network runs approximately 5 km, with nearly 30 percent of this area

considered to be of potential archaeological value. Digging trenches for pipelines has already adversely impacted the cultural heritage properties in Saffa, as evident from the documented destruction of ancient architectural remains and

the discovery of archaeological deposits from various periods, including a large amount of broken pottery vessels.

The Separation Wall In April of 2002, the Israeli government announced its

intention to build a Separation Wall and started construction in June of the same year. The Separation Wall was planned to stretch some 650 km from north to south and it has been constructed as either eight-meter-high concrete walls or barbed

wire with 60-80 m wide "buffer zones." Approximately 85

percent of the Separation Wall has been built on the eastern

side of the 1967 "Green Line"?the internationally recognized border between the Palestinian Territories and Israel. The

Separation Wall has had a particularly devastating impact on Palestinian archaeological and cultural heritage (Dr. M,

Barghouthi, personal communication, 2006). Field surveys indicate more than 12,000 archaeological and cultural heritage sites and features are located in the West Bank and the Gaza

Strip with approximately 2,000 of them cut, destroyed, or

demolished by the construction of the Separation Wall. In

addition, more than 4,500 archaeological sites and features, among them about 500 major sites, will fall under Israeli control

and jurisdiction after the completion of the Separation Wall, This means that more than half of the cultural properties of the

Palestinian Territories have been directly or indirectly impacted by construction of the Separation Wall (Hamdan 2005: 69-70).

In Saffa, the Separation Wall was constructed in 2005.

The 2 km long wall along the western side of the village resulted in the expropriation of nearly 4,300 dunums of land

(30 percent of the total area of the village) from the local residents. Most of the inhabitants have lost parts of their

agricultural lands, thus, a large percentage of the locals have

lost their traditional source of livelihood. Israeli bulldozers

uprooted hundreds of olive and wild trees, damaged hundreds of agricultural terraces, changed the physical appearance of the area, cut the original pathways between ancient

settlements as well as destroyed parts of three archaeological sites: el-Ku ma, Khirbet Huriya, and Khirbet Fa'aush (Mr. S. Sh. Mansur, personal communication, February 2006).

Khirbet Huriya has suffered the most harm because the wall has split the site into two unequal parts. Shortly before the bulldozers reached the site's boundary, an Israeli archaeological team consisting of dozens of workers excavated several spots

along the proposed line of the wall for about three weeks. The fieldwork uncovered significant architectural remains,

among them a Byzantine church. This historic feature is

relatively large in size and nearly 1.2 m of the structure

remains above the ground. The external walls are built of

large dressed stones approximately 1 m wide. Based on pottery sherds and architectural evidence, such as column remains,

capitals, and spatial organization, it appears that the building was destroyed before the area was reused during the early

Islamic period (seventh and eighth centuries). The discovery of this archaeologically and historically valuable building has obliged the Israelis to move the wall eastward towards Saffa and confiscate even more land from the villagers. The

political pressure to complete the wall quickly has forced the excavations along its course through Saffa to be abandoned. In

addition, the Separation Wall has cut off eight archaeological sites (el-Ku'ma, Khirbet Badd Isa, Khirbet Um-eth-thinein,

Khirbet Kureikur, Kreesina, Khirbet ed-Daliya, Khirbet Kfar Lut and Khirbet Huriya) from the village; effectively annexing them to Israel. Statistically Saffa has lost about 42 percent of the archaeological sites located in the village region.

Changes in Agricultural Practices Agriculture plays an important role in the formation of cultural

landscapes and reflects the relationship between humans and their environment, both past and present. Agricultural activities

also reveal knowledge pertaining to the terrain, environment,


and economic resources available to different cultures over time.

In Saffa, as throughout Palestine, the vast construction of stone

terraces shaping the hillsides of the country is perhaps the most

obvious evidence of agricultural activity. Built by hand over

many generations, terraces enabled people to enact some control

over their environment. Specifically, terraces combated erosion

during rainy seasons, held some amount of rainwater behind the terrace wall, provided downslope movement of water during

heavy rains and converted the steep slopes into arable land. In

general, it is difficult to accurately date terraces because they are not associated with archaeological and/or historical data.

Furthermore, the terraces were used over long periods of time by

different cultures and there is significant evidence of constant

repair and modifications. Sayej (1999: 203-07) argues that the

origin of terracing in the central hills of Palestine, including the area of Saffa, may have begun during the Chalcolithic period (4500-3200 BCE), increased during the Bronze Age (3200-1200

BCE) and flourished at the beginning of the Iron Age (1200-586

BCE). Based on local settlement history and land use in the study area, it is hypothesized that terrace construction in Saffa began in the third century BCE with constant maintenance, repair, and

extension through the present day.

The terraces were built of differently-sized, undressed stones

in irregular courses. Over the past few centuries, the local

farmers obtained the stones required for terraces by robbing local archaeological ruins or by collecting stones scattered in

the area surrounding the terraced areas. Terraces along more

mountainous slopes are constructed in two different methods;

either two courses of stones running parallel along the contour

of the slope, or a single course, composed of larger stones,

with smaller stones placed in two courses on the top. In the

construction of each type of terrace, farmers would cut trenches

along the contour of the slope in order to provide a foundation

for the terrace. Once the lower course was laid, the area of

the terrace was backfilled with soil and small stones from the

adjacent field areas. This procedure was repeated across the

length of the terrace in order to reach a uniformly suitable level to control the slope of the hill with subsequent thickening of the terrace walls to reinforce them against the pressure of erosion.

In addition to topographic considerations, terrace construction

was also determined by the abundance of the stones, availability of labor, and amount of land requiring terraces.

Over the course of a one-week field survey conducted in

January 2006, the author documented approximately 6,000

terraces, mostly in the mountainous areas surrounding the

village. This case study reveals that about 55 percent of the

terraced areas are completely abandoned and about 90 percent of their structures are at least partially destroyed. It is worth

noting that during this survey, the remains of several small

mentar, circular structures measuring approximately 2.5 m

in diameter, were observed. These mentar were built of field

stones with canopy-like roofs to protect farmers from the

sun and provide an elevated place from which farmers could

monitor their fields and dry fruits such as figs and grapes. In a

comprehensive study, Hamdan (1996: 457-468) states that this

kind of structure was widespread throughout Palestinian cities as well as villages and it reflects a portion of the country's past

economy. With the neglect of fig trees and grape vines over

the past three decades, the mentars have fallen into disuse and

disrepair and the results of the survey shows that all of these structures are completely unusable in their current condition.

The deteriorating status of the field structures can only be

understood by studying the social and economic condition of the

local community. Ethnographic and demographic interviews were

conducted with a sample of 20 landowning families; all family members over 16 years old were interviewed. The study revealed

that the neglect and destruction of agricultural structures were

caused by various factors including: 1) the increasing difficulty of

subsistence farming due to low productivity and increasingly high costs of living (according to the interviews conducted, nearly 90

percent of the landowners have chosen to send their sons to work

either in Israel or in the West Bank) ; 2) the construction of new

houses for which local residents take stone from neglected and

distant terraces; 3) the division of farmland due to inheritance

which reduces availability of large tracts of land that can provide

sustainability for individual families; 4) the collapse of the

extended family; and 5) destruction caused by grazing animals,

particularly goats and sheep, which have become more popular in the village.

Agricultural activity not only impacts cultural heritage

properties like terraces and mentars, it also affects archaeological

sites and causes immense damage to shallow remains. The

potential damage to archaeological remains results mainly from

deep plowing and cultivation. In the past, local farmers used

light ploughs drawn by beasts of burden, which only penetrated the ground to a depth of 20 cm, but in the last few years farmers

have increasingly come to rely on tractors that penetrate to

a depth of 45 cm. Ploughing to this depth dramatically raises

the risk of destroying archaeological features and damaging the

architectural remains of ancient constructions. When farmers

unearth stones from these structures, they are typically collected

and either gathered in heaps or used in terrace construction or

repair, thus changing the physical appearance of the landscape and placing archaeological remains at risk. The consequences of

deep plowing are more dire on sloped areas because the process

of plowing precipitates erosion with the result that new layers are disturbed with each subsequent plowing. In the last five

years, some farmers have reformed parcels of their land through

projects financially supported by UNDP; three of them are

located on two different archaeological sites. Heavy machinery was used to level the ground and to remove the old structures,

causing serious damage to the cultural heritage properties in these


areas. It is estimated that approximately 100 terraces were either

damaged or destroyed, one third of them are in areas dated to the Roman and Byzantine period.

Local farmers have also planted numerous trees in areas

with archaeological sites without regard to Article 18(c) of the 1929 Palestinian Antiquities Law which states "no person shall excavate, build, plant trees ..., on or in the immediate

neighborhood of an historical monument or site, without the

permission of the Director" (National Campaign for Protection

the Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 1993: 15). Planting any kind of tree threatens the archaeological remains because the farmers must dig a pit approximately 40 cm deep to place the sapling, disturbing the uppermost deposits. Furthermore, the growing roots of the tree affect the layers and structural

evidence below it. Typically, tree roots follow the path towards a moisture source and often find their way to cisterns and

caves. The Saffa local council estimates that approximately 2,000 new olive, almond, and fruit trees were planted during the last five years throughout the village, including 200 in seven archaeological sites.

The Abuse of Cultural Heritage Sites According to the results of the survey and interviews

conducted with Saffa residents, it is obvious that many locals

engaged in the misuse of archaeological and historic features,

especially in the urban area of the village. This abuse of cultural

heritage properties is based on a lack of public awareness of the value of heritage preservation and the desire of local residents to utilize these properties for financial gain (e.g., looting) or

personal use (e.g., house construction).

A total of 31 caves and cisterns were discovered to be suffering from deleterious modern usage. 25 caves or cisterns dating to the

Roman or Byzantine period (37 BCE-638 CE), were connected by

plastic piping to private dwellings or industrial units for use as septic tanks. Some of the smaller cisterns were enlarged by carving their sides and floors, but the rest were used without

any substantial modifications. In addition, six burial caves from the Roman-Byzantine period were found filled with rubble or

cement to reinforce ground for new house construction.

Numerous winepresses were identified in a field survey conducted under the supervision of the author in the summer

of 2001 and 12 of the presses were excavated. The majority had olive trees, fig trees, or grapevines planted in their collecting vats

(al-Houdalieh 2004: 6-27). Based on the results of the excavation, it is estimated that the growth of the trees has caused great damage to the plaster-covered sides and floors of the winepresses.

Despite the efforts of the local council to impose basic sanitation and waste disposal practices in the village, some

local residents continue to dispose of solid waste in abandoned and neglected buildings of architectural and historic interest.

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A total of 20 houses and their associated courtyards are used for dumping solid waste and, in a few cases, the accumulated

deposits have reach depths of 2 m. This activity has changed the physical appearance of these buildings and significantly impacted any future use or preservation of the structures.

Israeli Settlements Israelis have confiscated a substantial amount of land from

Saffa and established three settlements on portions of Saffa's

hinterlands. The first settlement was built in 1977 on the

archaeological site of Khirbet Kafr Lut; named after a biblical site

and included in Madaba mosaic map (Hajaj 1990: 431). Based on the investigations by Finkelstein and others (Finkelstein and Lederman. 1997: 143-44), this site was inhabited from the Persian up to the early Ottoman period. The second settlement,

Kfar Sefer, was constructed on the site of Badd Isa and its

adjacent neighborhood in 1991 (Tofakji 1994: 47). The land for the establishment of this settlement was confiscated from residents in Saffa and the neighboring village of Deir Kadees

(Mr. F. A. Mansur, personal communication, January 2006). The site of this settlement displays evidence of habitation dating

to the Middle Bronze Age, Iron Age, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine period. (Finkelstein and Lederman 1997: 148-49). Lebeed, the third Israeli settlement, has been under construction since the 1990s. It is on the archaeological site of Khirbet

Kureikur, which has remains dating to the Hellenistic, Roman,

Byzantine, Crusader, and early Ottoman period (Finkelstein and

Lederman 1997: 140-41). With the expansion of the settlement to the east and north, a portion of the archaeological site

of Umm eth-Thinein, dating to the Roman and early Islamic

period, has also been impacted. The Israel Antiquities Authority conducted salvage excavations on these archaeological sites

before construction began on the settlement. Yet, very few of

the valuable ancient remains were kept, and the majority of the unearthed archaeological structures were completely destroyed by the construction processes.

Conclusions and Recommendations Saffa, as with many other areas in the Palestinian Territories,

faces numerous dangers and challenges to the preservation,

protection, and management of its archaeological and

cultural heritage properties. Based on the field survey and

ethnographic and demographic interview results, the majority of archaeological and cultural heritage sites in the study area

suffer from some form of disturbance, destruction, or partial

demolition due to human activities.

To ensure the protection of cultural heritage throughout the

Occupied Palestinian Territories as well as in Saffa, the following recommendations should be considered by key decision makers

within Palestinian society.


Destruction Factors of the Archaeological Sites in Saffa Region.

Stone Robbing Deep Ploughing Cultivation Separation Wall Looting Israeli Settlement Palestinian Construction Site

The construction of private dwellings by the locals has affected 25 percent of the archaeological sites and 20 percent have been adversely

impacted by the Israeli settlement of them. Some 65 percent of the archaeological sites were looted and it is thought that the rest were not

dug because of their location. Meanwhile 35 percent of the archaeological sites are affected by robbing their terraces, whereas the rest exist

relatively intact because they are located far away from the village or there is no means for tractors to access them. A total of 60 percent of these

sites are planted with trees and 40 percent of them are deep ploughed. Depending on the field observation, it is concluded that the absence of

planting in the rest of the sites is in response to political factors or to the shallow depth of the soil. Only two sites, constituting 10 percent of the

archaeological sites, have been undisturbed by recent human activities; this is due to their distant location, shallow soils and/or political reasons.

Urban Planning To protect the traditional buildings, archaeological sites,

and the environment as a cultural landscape, local councils

must coordinate efforts with concerned governmental

ministries such as the Tourism and Archaeology, Education,

and Department of Licensing and Planning to develop a

master urban development plan. A fundamental aspect of any urban planning must be an accurate and complete

inventory of archaeological and cultural properties, which

will enable responsible agencies to classify and rank properties

according to their historic and cultural value. Based on this

inventory, urban planners would be better informed as to

which buildings should be preserved and which buildings or

land plots are suitable for development and construction.

However, only through coordinated efforts will the cultural

heritage of Palestinians be protected from destruction and

damage due to construction and development projects.

Raising Awareness

Through collaboration with, and coordination between, the

Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, relevant

non-governmental organizations, and the local community,

seminars and informative brochures must be made available

to local residents, particularly landowners and farmers since

they constitute the largest potential source of impact on

cultural properties. The purpose of these activities should be to increase appreciation of archaeological and cultural

heritage and educate communities on the proper protocols

concerning cultural properties. A core component of any such

program should be the clarification and explanation of the various antiquities laws that are in place to protect cultural

properties. In addition, programs should be incorporated into

the public school curriculum to dramatically increase the scope of awareness and convey the urgency of archaeological and

cultural heritage preservation work to the future landowners

and decision makers in Palestinian society.


Restoration and Rehabilitation An immediate step to ensure the preservation and protection

of cultural properties is to restore and rehabilitate the most

valuable and most vulnerable cultural properties in villages.

Ideally these restoration and rehabilitation projects would be

aimed at transforming neglected properties into centers for

public use. In Saffa, there are currently four large Late Ottoman

(1750-1917 CE) courtyards (ahwash) that are in relatively good condition that could be utilized for public purposes. These

courtyards would be suitable for a women's center, a traditional

crafts center, a youth center, and a cultural heritage museum.

Legislation The existing legislation concerning archaeological and cultural

heritage must be strengthened in order to provide adequate

protection for sites, enable conservation of endangered sites

and curb the widespread problem of looting. Once enacted, the

legislation must be enforced through the "policing arm" of the

Palestinian Authority and supported by the Ministry of Tourism

and Archaeology, as well as local councils and concerned citizens.

The most effective tool at the disposal of the Palestinian Authority is to deny building permits to those individuals known to have

damaged or destroyed archaeological or cultural properties. In addition, the Palestinian Authority should recognize those

individuals who have abided by the various antiquities laws in

the completion of their construction projects.

References al-Houdalieh, S.

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2004 Roman and Byzantine Winepresses in Saffa Village. In

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2006 The Courtyard System in Saffa During the Late Ottoman Period.

Nablus: An-Najah University.

Bacon, F.

1997 Houses Are Built to Live in and Not to Look on. Pp. 3-37

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Chamberlain, K.

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the Arabic Studies, The Palestinian Geographic Center.

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in Archaeologies of the Middle East, Critical Perspectives, ed. S.

Pollock and R. Bernbeck. Maiden, MA: Blackwell.


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