Avi Gopher

• Tel Aviv University

Ground stone tools are frequently found in archaeological contexts from early to late prehistoric times. These tools are key evidence for reconstructing past societies’ lifeways, technology and know-how, given their role in different tasks, including subsistence and craft activities. In recent years, the field of use-wear studies on ground stone to...

Biased skeletal part representation is a key element for making inferences about transport decisions, carcass procurement, and use patterns in anthropogenic accumulations. In the absence of destructive taphonomic processes, it is often assumed that the abundance of different anatomical portions represents selective transport and discard patterns of...

Plant domestication represents a major turning point in human history, resulting in the shift from a hunting/gathering/fishing-based economy to food production. Combining the analysis of ground stone tools and dental calculus, the PATH project aims to investigate dynamics of plant consumption, and the knowledge and toolkits involved in their proces...

The Acheulean site of Evron, which includes three localities (Quarry, Zinat, Pardes), is situated in the Western Galilee coast of Israel. More than 500 handaxes were retrieved from the Late Acheulean Zinat locality, from surface and from shallow excavation trenches. No flakes were found and no raw material sources is known from the vicinity of the...

The abundance of obsidian at the Pottery Neolithic Wadi Rabah culture (7600/500–6800 cal. bp ) settlement of Hagoshrim IV in northern Israel, the rich repertoire of stamp seals, and imported chlorite vessels at the site, as well as the presence of skilled obsidian knappers, indicate intensive trade. Reviewing the archaeological data, we propose tha...

In this study, we discuss learning aspects related to the production of prehistoric stone tools and their use as a holistic process, with a case study from the late Lower Paleolithic Levant—recycled items from the site of Qesem Cave (420–200,000 bp), Israel. Qesem Cave is a central and well-studied Acheuleo-Yabrudian site. Among the set of distinct...

Two opposing models currently dominate Near Eastern plant domestication research. The core area‐one event model depicts a knowledge‐based, conscious, geographically centered, rapid single‐event domestication, while the protracted‐autonomous model emphasizes a non‐centered, millennia‐long process based on unconscious dynamics. The latter model relie...

Identifying the geological sources of archaeological flint is crucial to various studies in prehistoric research. Here we present a study of flint sources in southern Israel using elemental analysis. Six Neolithic quarries and three geological outcrops of several geological formations were sampled and analyzed by ICP-MS in order to investigate whet...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

Qesem cave is a Middle Pleistocene site located close to Tel Aviv, Israel, assigned to the Acheuleo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex (AYCC) of the Lower Palaeolithic. The site provides rich assemblages of knapped flint, animal remains and some human teeth making it of particular interest. Its location in the Levantine corridor confers a major interest to...

As noted earlier, three cereals (barley, durum or emmer wheat and einkorn wheat), four species of legumes (pea, lentil, chickpea and bitter vetch) and flax, which is neither a cereal nor a legume but rather belongs to the Linaceae family, form the founder crops of the Near East. In this chapter, we compare the biological characteristics of the two...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

In this chapter, we bring together most of the aspects discussed earlier, including biological, agricultural-agronomical and cultural facets related to plant domestication and the roots of Near Eastern agriculture. We briefly describe the spread of domesticated plants and the institutionalization of the agricultural system while discussing the hist...

The area in which the domestication of plants – the Neolithic crop package with which we are concerned – and animals took place is known as the Fertile Crescent (Figure 2.1, and see Chapter 4), the Levant or the Near East. These terms differ in source and meaning according to the scientific or geographic context in which they were first introduced....

The Agricultural Revolution (which made us all – humans – food-producers) is a major landmark in human history. It reflects a significant transformation in the general organization of human society and its components (see Glossary, General Terms, Agricultural Revolution). Since the advent of humans as tool-makers, some three million years ago, that...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

Similar to wild populations, traditional landraces (varieties, cultivars) of many annual crops form dynamic populations, the genetic make-up of which changes over time. This point was clarified in our earlier discussion (Chapter 5, and see Chapters 8, 9) on the changing incidence of early and late bloomers responding to seasonal rainfall among both...

The Fertile Crescent, named so after its lunate silhouette, spans from Khuzestan Province in Iran, across the Zagros Mountains in western Iran (Kurdistan), to the river valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris in Iraq, south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria, and then westwards towards Lebanon, the Mediterranean zone of Israel and Jordan and finally spa...

We introduce this chapter with a partial discussion of the conceptual framework that underlies the research on the Agricultural Revolution (Glossary, General Terms, Agricultural Revolution). We first explain how hunter-gatherers gained their knowledge and put it to use. We then present key ideas that have been offered throughout the years to explai...

In this chapter, we discuss the questions of where and when Near Eastern plant domestication occurred: Did it transpire in a single, defined area, or perhaps it took place in different areas across the entire Fertile Crescent? Was each crop domesticated separately, or perhaps several crops were domesticated together as a harmonious agricultural pac...

The Agricultural Revolution – including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East – that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, ba...

In this chapter, we discuss the evolution of domesticated plants in the periods subsequent to the episode of domestication. We unfold the influences of domestication on the genetic variability of different crops and trace the evolutionary forces that promote genetic diversification and its preservation over the years. At the same time, we also iden...

The behaviour and mobility of hominins are dependent on the availability of biotic and abiotic resources, which, in temperate ecosystems, are strongly related to seasonality. The objective of this study is to establish evidence of seasonality and duration of occupation(s) of specific archaeological contexts at late Lower Palaeolithic Qesem Cave bas...

A “cultivation prior to domestication”, or a “pre-domestication cultivation” phase features in many reconstructions of Near Eastern plant domestication. Archaeobotanists who accept this notion search for evidence to support the assumption regarding a wild plant’s cultivation phase, which in their view, preceded and eventually led to plant domestica...

Production of stone artefacts using pyro-technology is known from the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Europe and the Levant, and the Middle Stone Age in Africa. However, determination of temperatures to which flint artefacts were exposed is impeded by the chemical and structural variability of flint. Here we combine Raman spectroscopy and machine...

This paper presents the results of a flint type analysis performed for the small assemblage of bifaces found at the Acheulo-Yabrudian site Qesem Cave (QC), Israel (420–200 kya), which includes 12 handaxes, three bifacial roughouts, one trihedral, and one bifacial spall. The analysed artefacts were measured and classified into flint types based on v...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00955-z.

A protracted domestication time-frame for cereals in the Near East is widely endorsed by the plant domestication research community. This occurs in tandem with the pre-domestication cultivation concept, which rests on the assumption that human husbandry operations (namely cultivation) exerted selection pressures in favor of domesticated phenotypes...

The Negev Desert, an arid region of the southern Levant, was only occasionally suited for human occupation in prehistory. Archaeological sites are especially abundant in the Epipaleolithic periods, likely due to changes in the availability and distribution of water resources. We consider how hunter-gatherers adapted to this sometimes marginal regio...

Employing an integrated approach to investigate the use of Late Lower Paleolithic flint tools found at the site of Qesem Cave (Israel), we revealed a particular trace pattern related to the employment of ashes at the site. Using a designated collection of replica items and combining use-wear and residue (morphological analysis, FTIR, SEM-EDX) analy...

Plant domestication is often discussed as a form of mutualism between humans and crop plants. Ethnographies provide records of a multitude of adaptive strategies employed by human societies with varying degrees of reliance on manipulation of wild plant resources. These manipulations have included vegetation clearance, controlled burning, pruning, c...

Recent research has demonstrated that the Eocene Timrat Formation outcrops in northeastern Israel, which appear as an extensive land ‘strip’ west of and parallel to the Jordan Rift Valley, was a major source of flint in prehistoric times. This is supported by the identification of three large-scale extraction and reduction (E&R) complexes (Nahal Di...

The presence of shaped stone balls at early Paleolithic sites has attracted scholarly attention since the pioneering work of the Leakeys in Olduvai, Tanzania. Despite the persistent presence of these items in the archaeological record over a period of two million years, their function is still debated. We present new results from Middle Pleistocene...

Flint-bearing Eocene outcrops are well known from west of the northern Jordan Rift Valley, appearing as a strip of land along the Eastern Galilee and extensively used by prehistoric knappers as a rich source of quality raw material. In this paper we report for the first time on the flint extraction and reduction site of Kela, located within an isol...

The site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey keeps fascinating archaeologists as it is being exposed. The excavation since 1995 has been accompanied by a lively discussion about the meaning and implications of its remarkable early Neolithic megalithic architecture, unprecedented in its monumentality, complexity and symbolic content. The building...

Flin items exhibiting modified patinated surfaces (usually known as "double patina") have become a criterion in assesing lithic recycling. These recycled items are patina-covered flakes items that were collected and modified again. They show "old" (original) flakes patinated surfaces alongside "new" surfaces with the "old" patina removed. We call t...

Hundreds of shells, in particular marine shells, were found in the small MPPNB-PN site of Nahal Yarmuth 38. Following is a glimpse into different aspects of shell presence and use at the site, pertaining to the choice of shell taxa, the use of shells as beads, tools, or raw material, and their combination with other materials, specifically pigments...

Bone marrow and grease constitute an important source of nutrition and have attracted the attention of human groups since prehistoric times. Marrow consumption has been linked to immediate consumption following the procurement and removal of soft tissues. Here, we present the earliest evidence for storage and delayed consumption of bone marrow at Q...

Nahal Yarmuth 38: a new and unique Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site in central Israel - Volume 93 Issue 371 - Avi Gopher, Anna Eirikh-Rose, Hai Ashkenazi, Eyal Marco, Hila May, Yulia Makoviychuk, Lidar Sapir-Hen, Shirad Galmor, Heeli C. Schechter, Dana Ackerfeld, Gil Haklay, Katia Zutovski

The presence of fast-moving small game in the Paleolithic archaeological faunal record has long been considered a key variable to assess fundamental aspects of human behavior and subsistence. Birds occupy a prominent place in this debate not only due to their small size and to the difficulties in capturing them (essentially due to their ability to...

We examined the architectural remains of the public structure known as the "Terrazzo building" in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Çayönü, in order to explore aspects of the architectural design process involved. This was achieved by identifying the spatial principles and compositional laws governing the generation of the architectural form (archi...

The purposeful production of small flakes is integral to the lithic variability of many Middle Pleistocene sites. Inhabitants of the Acheulo-Yabrudian site of Qesem Cave, Israel, systematically recycled ‘old’ discarded blanks and tools, using them as cores for the production of small sharp tools with distinct technological features. These recycling...

Recent research has demonstrated that the Eocene Timrat formation in northeastern Israel, which appears as an extensive land “strip” west of and parallel to the Rift Valley, was a major source of prehistoric flint. This supposition is supported by three large‐scale extraction and reduction (E&R) complexes identified within this region, which offer...

Abstract. The study presents the paleodemographic characteristics of the Pottery Neolithic period (8500-6500 cal. BP) populations of the Southern Levant. The Pottery Neolithic (PN) sample consists of 108 individuals, most of which originated from sites in the Mediterranean zone of Israel and some of which came from sites in the Negev. This study...

A refitting project was performed on a lithic assemblage from the Late Pottery Neolithic Wadi Rabah refuse pit (Locus 8071) found at Ein Zippori, Israel. The assemblage includes mainly waste products from bifacial tool manufacture and maintenance processes. The refitted sequences reflect initial reduction stages as well as advanced re-sharpening an...

There has been much progress recently in reconstructing the transportation of lithic materials from quarry/extraction sites and workshops to occupation sites. The suggested “theoretical nodule,” “cortex ratio,” and “volume ratio” measures have proven useful, mainly when applied to cases in which relatively small initial nodules/cobbles were selecte...

Chickpea shows a distinct domestication trajectory vis‐a‐vis pod dehiscence and growth cycle mediated by vernalization insensitivity compared with its companion Near Eastern legumes. Our objectives were: (i) to map the quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with vernalization response and seed free tryptophan in domesticated × wild chickpea prog...

This paper presents a new techno-typological analysis of a sample of small flakes that were produced through recycling from discarded blanks at the late Pottery Neolithic and Early Bronze Age site of Ein-Zippori, Lower Galilee, Israel. This study shows that the systematic production of small flakes from previously discarded blanks was not related t...

A microwear analysis of recycled lithic artefacts from late Pottery Neolithic Wadi Rabah and Early Bronze Age layers at Ein-Zippori, Israel included cores-on-flakes (COFs) which are discarded blanks made into cores, and the flakes detached from them. COFs may have microwear traces that formed before they were recycled. The focus here is on how blan...

This paper reports on a recently discovered Middle Paleolithic and Neolithic/Chalcolithic open-air flint extraction and reduction complex at Mt. Achbara in Israel's Eastern Galilee. Lithic assemblages recovered from a few of the hundreds of tailing piles documented in a field survey indicate a combination of Middle Paleolithic finds including Leval...

This paper describes the techno-typological affinities of a specific Acheulo-Yabrudian lithic assemblage dated to over 300 ka years ago from Qesem Cave, a middle Pleistocene site in central Israel. Aspects of blade production, knapping trajectories, and lithic recycling are examined in detail, demonstrating that this assemblage, notwithstanding its...

Qesem Cave is a Middle Pleistocene site in Israel occupied between 420 and 200 ka. Excavations have revealed a wealth of innovative behaviors most likely practiced by a new hominin lineage. These include early evidence for the habitual and continuous use of fire, the repeated use of a central hearth, systematic flint and bone recycling, early blade...

Scientific Reports 6 : Article number: 37686; 10.1038/srep37686 published online: 25 November 2016 ; updated: 03 May 2017 . In the Supplementary Information file originally published with this Article, Figure S3 was elongated and of poor quality.

The Agricultural Revolution and plant domestication in the Near East (among its components) have fascinated generations of scholars. Here, we narrate the history of ideas underlying plant domestication research since the late 19th century. Biological and cultural perspectives are presented through two prevailing models: one views plant domesticatio...

For a long while, the controversy surrounding several bone tools coming from pre-Upper Palaeolithic contexts favoured the view of Homo sapiens as the only species of the genus Homo capable of modifying animal bones into specialised tools. However, evidence such as South African Early Stone Age modified bones, European Lower Palaeolithic flaked bone...

Israel is part of a corridor connecting Africa and Euro-Asia that has also been a major migratory route of birds throughout the Quaternary. Very few Middle Pleistocene sites have a large enough record of avian species to provide a taxonomic composition of ornithic paleocommunities to explain their geographic distribution and the human uses of birds...

Fan (or tabular) scrapers are a diagnostic tool type in Chalcolithic Ghassulian and Early Bronze Age lithic assemblages from the southern Levant. To date, only small numbers of fan scrapers have been reported from the Late Pottery Neolithic Wadi Rabah culture. In this paper we present a techno-typological analysis of a fair sample of fan scrapers a...

The results of a microwear analysis of samples of fan scrapers and fan scrapers spalls from late Pottery Neolithic (PN) and Early Bronze Age (EBA) occupation layers at Ein Zippori, Lower Galilee, Israel are presented. The goal of the microwear analysis was to determine the function of the fan scrapers and compare the visible usewear on the scrapers...

A unique Pottery Neolithic context corresponding to the Wadi Rabah culture was found at the multi-layered site of Ein Zippori, Israel. Given the significant amount of flakes, cortical flakes, thinning flakes, and bifacial tool rejects, it was classified as a refuse pit in which bifacial knapping waste from a nearby workshop was disposed. In this pa...

Recently found open-air flint extraction and workshop sites in the Eastern Galilee, Israel, are the focus of this paper. Lithic assemblages from among a few of the thousands of tailing piles documented in a field survey, indicate mostly late Lower Palaeolithic/Middle Palaeolithic and rarely Neolithic/Chalcolithic affinities. These discoveries subst...

Food production economies based on domesticated plants and livestock is a relatively recent phenomenon in the human career. Packages of nutritionally and agronomically balanced crop plants evolved independently in several world regions including sub-Saharan Africa, Meso-America, North-east America, East Asia, and the Near East. The longest research...

The Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex (AYCC) of the late Lower Paleolithic Levant consists of three major industries, one of which is the blade-dominated Amudian. This paper provides an in-depth comparison of the Amudian blade industry from three major AYCC sites in the Levant - Qesem Cave, Tabun Cave and Yabrud Rockshelter I. The results demonstr...

The technological innovation involving the controlled use of fire represents a decisive change in human subsistence. Hearths and the spatial distribution patterns associated with them constitute a valuable element in deepening our knowledge on human behaviour and its evolution. Studies focused on hearths and on the use of fire in general are divers...

Dental wear pattern is an important source of information regarding dietary habits, food preparation, and human economic behavior. In the current study we present our preliminary analysis of the dental wear patterns of the Middle Pleistocene (420-200 kya) Qesem Cave teeth. Five types of tooth wear were studied: Occlusal wear, interproximal wear, su...

Humans are limited in their capacity to convert protein into energy. We present a hypothesis that a “bell” shaped thorax and a wide pelvis evolved in Neandertals, at least in part, as an adaptation to a high protein diet. A high protein diet created a need to house an enlarged liver and urinary system in a wider lower trunk. To test the hypothesis,...

The economy of the traditional Mediterranean fishing village (MFV) is defined as one based on both agro-pastoral and marine exploitation. This subsistence base first developed on the Levantine coast in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period (the end of the 9th and first half of the 8th millennium BP uncalibrated), as documented at the site of Atlit-Yam...

The Mid-Pleistocene Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv in Israel yielded several hominin teeth and abundant faunal and cultural remains. The geological sequences of the cave were dated to 420,000–200,000 years ago. In this contribution, we focus on the three lower postcanine teeth which are among the oldest material from the cave. We used both Geometric Morp...

The Qesem Cave Middle Pleistocene hominin site has yielded a well preserved lower second deciduous molar (dm2-QC2), among several other human dental remains. It has been previously described by Hershkovitz et al. using traditional methods. In this study, we used multiple approaches in order to characterize the outer and inner morphology of dm2-QC2,...

A total of 266 obsidian items were found during four seasons of excavation at the Late Prehistoric site of Ein Zippori, Israel. Most of the assemblage was assigned to the Wadi Rabah culture. The obsidian artefacts originated in three Anatolian sources – Cappadocian Göllü Dağ and eastern Anatolian Bingöl A and B. Several colour and texture differenc...

Following the emergence of farming societies in the Neolithic Near East, a number of fruit trees were domesticated and became an integral part of the mixed farming economy of the region. These include emblematic crops such as olive, grape vine, date palm, fig, and pomegranate, as well as almond and carob. Unlike the Near Eastern founder grain crops...

This paper focuses on the results of a preliminary study of flint items densities in different areas and different parts of the stratigrapahic column of Qesem Cave. Qesem Cave is a karst chamber cave with a ~10m stratigraphic sequence assigned to the Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex (AYCC) of the late Lower Paleolithic in the Levant dated to 420-...

Most of the studies related to the function of Paleolithic stone tools carried out so far focused mainly on the analysis of the worked materials and the activities performed. On the other hand, only few works included an analysis of the tool griping area/s, and the wear derived by object manipulation. Here we present the results of an experimental...

Following the emergence of farming societies in the Neolithic Near East, a number of fruit trees were domesticated and became an integral part of the mixed farming economy of the region. These include emblematic crops such as olive, grape vine, date palm, fig, and pomegranate, as well as almond and carob. Unlike the Near Eastern founder grain crops...

The authors report on investigations at quarrying sites on Mount Pua, Israel. they suggest that the area shows a degree of industrial organization from the late Lower Palaeolithic with a resultant impact on the landscape.

The Middle Pleistocene site of Qesem Cave is mostly characterized by a plethora of cultural innovations and “Ahead of its time” phenomena (e.g., habitual use of fire; systematic blade production; Quina scrapers; lithic and bone recycling; systematic cooperative hunting; meat roasting, and more). Within such a context of major cultural innovations,...