The study of the Levantine Mousterian benefited from the long stratigraphy of Tabun cave and from a host of other excavated sites. The Middle Palaeolithic in the Taurus-Zagros ranges differs in part from that of the Levant, but resembles the industries from the Caucasus region. The basis for the general subdivision of the Levantine industries is the sequence of Tabun Cave. The increase in the number of well-published lithic assemblages including the data pertaining to the variability within each of the Mousterian industries was the result of the advent of technological studies centered on recognizing the reduction strategies, expressed in both, the basic modes within the Levallois concept, as well as other lithic production concepts. Although the morphological variability of the lithic artifacts from various sites is not fully portrayed through the simplified model based on the Tabun Cave sequence, it seems that the overall chronological trend is clear, and that the general entities are valid archaeological ‘cultures’ in time and space, as follows:
1. ‘Tabun D type’ assemblages are stratigraphically located at the base of the Mousterian sequence in multilayered sites such as Tabun Cave, unit IX, Yabrud I Rockshelter, Hayonim Cave layers F and lower E, and in Douara Cave layer IV, Abu Sif, and the open-air site of Rosh Ein Mor in the Negev highlands.
This entity is characterized by the production of elongated blanks sometimes defined as blades, pointed, and when retouched are known as Abu Sif points. The blanks were removed from cores with basal preparation and correction of the core convexity conveys the impression that the reduction had been bidirectional. In Hayonim Cave and Rosh Ein Mor, both the laminar and Levallois methods core reduction strategies were practiced. Other tool types are the burins that occur in this industry.
Most Early Mousterian assemblages in the southern Levant were produced by this particular Leval-lois method and could be called Abu Sifian. In the northern Levant, the Early Mousterian Hummalian industry from sites in the el-Kowm Basin (northeast Syria) is essentially a bladey industry, mostly non-Levallois. Further north, in the Caucasus Mountains, a similar bladey Mousterian is known from Djrujula Cave, and a few other sites such as Koudaro Cave, and is sometimes named Djrujulan. Currently, the dating for all these industries ranges from about 250 000 to c. 150000 years, and are therefore of similar ages to the ‘Tabun D type’.
2. The ‘Tabun C-type’ assemblages are found in multilayered sites above the ‘Tabun D-type’ ones (Tabun I 18-26 or layer C in Garrod’s excavations), Hayonim Cave upper layer E, and below the ‘Tabun B type’ in Tabun Cave. Most of the assemblages are characterized by the dominance of oval-rectangular blanks, best described from
Qafzeh cave. The common products of this method are suboval and subquadrangular flakes, sometimes of large dimensions, struck from Levallois cores through centripetal and/or bidirectional exploitation. Triangular points appear in small numbers in definite horizons, such as layer XV in Qafzeh. Other generally similar assemblages were reported from Skhul layer B, Naame, Ras el Kelb, Ksar ’Akil XXVI, and Quneitra where the lithic assemblage is also considered as having particular traits.
3. ‘Tabun B type’ comprises assemblages dominated by the production of mainly flakes and triangular Levallois points, frequently with a broad-base - the typical ‘chapeau de gendarme’ - striking platform. They are removed from unidirectional convergent Levallois cores. There is a striking similarity between Kebara units IX and X, Tabun layer B both in Mount Carmel and Tor Faraj in southern Jordan. In Amud and Tor Sabiha Caves, unidirectional convergent cores yielded narrower and more elongated triangular flakes, sometimes called ‘leaf-shaped’ flakes. It is worth noting that blades do occur in all of these assemblages sometimes comprising up to 25 % of the blanks such as in Kebara units XI and XII, and Amud B1. Similar ‘Tabun B-type’ assemblages occur in Bezez Cave layer B, Ksar Akil layer XXVIII (Lebanon), Dederiyeh (northern Syria), and Um el Tlel in el-Kowm Basin.
For historical reasons, it should be noted that the production of long and narrow flakes by unidirectional convergent mode of flaking, and the variable frequencies of blades in ‘Tabun B-type’ assemblages, were interpreted as suggesting that this industry could have been the technological progenitor of the bladey Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP). While this suggestion means that the technical change, or the first step of the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution, took place in the Levant, it also has biological implications. For scholars who classify the human fossils associated with the ‘Tabun B-type’ industries (Kebara, the woman from Tabun, Amud, Dederiyeh) as Western Asian Neanderthals, it means that the descendants of this population were those who initiated the new technological revolution of the Upper Palaeolithic. This stands in contradiction to the genetic evidence that finds correlation between modern humans and Upper Palaeolithic industries. Hence, the emergence of the new lithic reduction sequences and tool types should be sought in a different region such as the Nile Valley or East Africa.
The Middle Palaeolithic assemblages uncovered in the caves of the Zagros and Taurus resemble those of the southern Caucasus. The common knapping methods are discoiadal and Levallois and the frequencies of retouched pieces are very high. The dates from
Karain Cave (Turkey), Shanidar (Iraq), and Ortvale Klde (Georgia) indicate that these assemblages, rich in well-retouched and resharpened points and sidescrapers, characterize mostly the Last Glacial Mousterian. Surface collections in Anatolia, north of the Taurus ranges, demonstrate the presence of Levallois-dominated industries.
One of the cultural characteristics of the Middle Palaeolithic of the region are the burials. The best known are from Skhul and Qafzeh cave, embedded in ‘Tabun C-type’ assemblages, and considered as archaic modern humans, possibly related to the finds in Omo-Kibish and Herto in Ethiopia. Late burials are those of the Neanderthals in Kebara, Tabun, Amud, Dederiyeh, and Shanidar caves (see Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques).
Faunal analysis indicated that humans hunt what was available in the vicinity of their seasonal camps. In the Levant, the main game animals were the gazelle and the fallow deer, while in the Lebanese mountains the fallow deer and the wild goat were very common. In Shanidar the wild goat was the common hunt and in the Caucasus the thur (Capra Caucasica). Both the identified hunting seasons and differences in the number of retouched pieces versus cores and debitage products indicate that Middle Palaeolithic humans were mobile, employing various habitats, either along altitudinal transects (Zagros and Caucasus) or more along topographic lows (the Levantine landscapes). Meager evidence concerning the vegetal diet was provided by carbonized plants from Kebara Cave. In spite of the poor preservation, it seems that in all the Mediterranean areas plants were more important as a stable source of food than animal tissues.
World History
