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The Dana-Faynan (South Jordan) Epipalaeolithic Project: Report on Reconnaissance Survey, 14–22 April 1996
Abstract
This report describes the results of a preliminary survey conducted as part of the Wadi Faynan Project to assess the potential of the area for the study of the Epipalaeolithic. Several flint scatter sites were located in a variety of topographic locations. These results suggest that further research will be rewarding and additional field work will be undertaken.
... Since this first survey, the area has only been subject to limited archaeological survey and investigation. This is particularly notable in comparison to investigations in the south of Jordan in areas such as Wadi Rum and Wadi Faynan [8][9][10][11] and more recent investment in heritage research around Khaybar and Al Ula in Saudi Arabia [12][13]. Recent years have seen surveys investigating palaeolithic evidence from across the coastal zone of the survey area, designed to better understand early hominids' dispersals out of Africa [14]. ...
... Since this first survey, the area has only been subject to limited archaeological survey and investigation. This is particularly notable in comparison to investigations in the south of Jordan in areas such as Wadi Rum and Wadi Faynan [8][9][10][11] and more recent investment in heritage research around Khaybar and Al Ula in Saudi Arabia [12,13]. ...
The historic environment of north-west Saudi Arabia is likely to be severely impacted by the construction of the Neom mega-city complex and the development of the city’s hinterland. This region, located east of the Gulf of Aqaba, has only been subject to limited archaeological survey in the past, limiting any assessment of this negative impact. This paper presents data collected through a remote sensing survey of the region undertaken by the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project, independent of the Neom project. It is argued that this data reflects a landscape of movement between north and south, with evidence of structures and monuments from at least the Bronze Age through to the pre-Islamic period, but little evidence of permanent settlement or agriculture. This should not be dismissed as a peripheral landscape, but one that contains rich archaeological evidence of concentrated activity, suggesting that some areas have held long-term significance to the people inhabiting and moving through this region.
This is the report of the 1997 and 1998 field seasons. Survey has located a number of aceramic sites in Wadis Dana, Faynan and Ghuwayr. Excavation has to date focussed on WF16, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site on a knoll above the confluence of Wadi Ghuwayr and Wadi Faynan. A sequence of construction and midden deposits has been located, along with the remains of human burial, faunal, floral, lithic and ground stone assemblages. Archaeological survey is linked to extensive geomorphological survey to provide the landscape context for the sites.
This report describes the third season of fieldwork by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and geographers working to reconstrnct the landscape history of the Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan over the past 200,000 years. The particular focus of the project is the long-term history of inter-relationships between landscape and people, as a contribution to the study of processes of desertification and environmental degradation. The geomorphological and palaeoecological studies have now established the outline sequence of landform changes and climatic fluctuations in the late Pleistocene and Holocene. The complex field system WF4 has now been recorded in its entirety in terms of wall construction, suiface artefacts, and hydrological features, as well as most of the outlying field systems. From these studies, in combination with the analysis of the suiface artefacts, an outline sequence of the water utilization and management strategies they represent can now be discerned. Ethnoarchaeology is also being used to investigate the present-day populations of the study area, their interactions with their landscape and with neighbouring socio-economic groups, in part to yield archaeological signatures to aid the interpretation of the suiface remains being gathered by the archaeological survey. Palynology is showing that Roman/Byzantine agriculture and mining severely impacted on the landscape in terms of deforestation; and geochemistry that Roman/Byzantine mining severely polluted the landscape, the effects of which are still apparent in the modern ecology of the study area.
The archaeological record of the Levantine Epipalaeolithic has generally been interpreted as showing an abrupt and marked change from a system of simple, mobile hunting-gathering to one of sedentary complex foraging. Thus the Natufian is seen to represent a revolutionary break from its immediate predecessors, the Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran. This paper, in examining this proposition, maintains that the emergence of the Natufian was in fact the result of diachronic evolutionary change. The Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran are shown not to conform to the small, simple and mobile paradigm and it is possible to document processual change leading to the Natufian. While the Natufian did emerge within a setting of palaeoenvironmental change, it is argued that the origins of this archaeological culture are best explained within a framework of evolving socioecological relationships. -Author
Excavations undertaken at two multi-phase Epipalaeolithic sites in the Wadi el-Jilat (central Jordan) highlight regional diversity in both lithic assemblages and settlement patterns during the late Pleistocene of the southern Levant. New dates from Jilat 6 confirm that an assemblage dominated by geometric triangles was manufactured between 15,500 and 16,700 b.p. (contemporary with the Kebaran) and recent excavations at Jilat 22 have revealed a non-microlithic blade-focussed assemblage with a novel tool form dating to around 13,000 b.p. (contemporary with the geometric Kebaran). The article also addresses the geomorphological/behavioural processes lying behind the formation of extensive late Pleistocene sites in the present steppe/desert transition zone of Jordan.
The Levantine Epipalaeolithic,
c.
20,000–10,000 BP, represents one of the most intensively studied periods in prehistoric research in the past 30 years, with literally hundreds of sites being discovered and many systematically investigated. The researchers involved come from a diverse range of backgrounds and national 'schools', and include American, Australian, British, French and Israeli scholars. Some, myself included, see its variability in chipped stone tool morphology, techniques of manufacture and specific means of hafting to reflect, in addition to functional factors, the stylistic traditions of specific groups in the landscape (Bar-Yosef 1991a; Goring-Morris 1987; 1995). This evidence is further bolstered by chrono-stratigraphy, settlement patterns, inter- and intra-site organization and patterning, as well as other material culture residues (Goring-Morris 1989a; 1989b; 1991).
Issue is taken with the arguments offered by Neeley & Barton to explain interassemblage variability in the Epipalaeolithic. The techno-typological attributes they discuss do, indeed, mark cultural/temporal traditions and there are no grounds for viewing them as representing stages within a reduction sequence.
We thank those whose interest in the Levantine Epipalaeolithic has led them to comment on our research. Such public discussion of differing interpretations is vital to understanding the past. In this article, we briefly respond to some of the points raised by those writing in this issue (G.A. Clark, N. Goring-Morris, D.O. Henry and J.L. Phillips) and in a previous issue (Fellner 1995; Kaufman 1995) of ANTIQUITY.
In this paper, we use data from 130 Epipalaeolithic assemblages from 115 Levantine sites to examine microlith technology in these late Pleistocene industries. We suggest that differences in microburin abundance and variation in microlith form are better viewed within a technological continuum of microlith manufacture, use and discard than as discrete, predetermined types. This model is used to reassess the behavioural significance of patterning in the lithic assemblages of Levantine Epipalaeolithic foragers. -from Authors
A prehistoric investigation in southern Jordan resulted in the discovery of 81 sites with occupations that spanned most of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. A comparison of the cultural and environmental successions of the region with parallel sequences in the Levant reveals that the prehistoric inhabitants of southern Jordan interacted more strongly with populations of the northern Levant than with nearby southern Levantine groups. Only during markedly arid episodes were strong relations established with southern Levantine populations. Prehistoric interaction spheres within the region appear to have been influenced more by environmental setting than geographic proximity.
The Mesolithic in western Europe has been characterized as a period of archery hunting (Rozoy 1989). Stone tool assemblages are frequently dominated by microliths and it has been widely assumed that these microliths formed the tips and barbs of arrows (Mellars 1976; Myers 1989; Zvelebil 1986). There is undeniably some contextual evidence to support this interpretation, but other functional possibilities cannot be discounted. David Clarke (1976), for instance, discussed the potential for microliths to be used as components of plant processing tools, while Dumont (1988) noted a number of alternative microlith functions in a microwear study of material from Mount Sandal in northern Ireland. During the course of research on upland Mesolithic assemblages in southwest Scotland excavated by Tom Affleck, one of the authors inferred a range of functions other than projectile use from wear traces on microliths (Finlayson 1989). This was of particular interest, as conventional wisdom generally divides British Mesolithic sites into upland, microlith rich, hunting camps and lowland, microlith poor, winter residential sites (Mellars 1976). Similarly, it has been assumed that if microliths represent projectile points, they would have had a high degree of visibility and therefore emblematic status. Building on these assumptions, detailed social and economic reconstructions have been proposed by authors such as Myers (1987, 1989), Jacobi (1987) and Zvelebil (1986).
Two further points in Neeley & Barton's 1994 paper are explored.
N&B, incorrectly attributing variability in these assemblages as representing strategies in lithic reduction, give as an example the differentiation between the Mushabian and the Geometric Kebaran complexes. Their thinking the microburin technique was used by the Geometric Kebarans but is masked by retouch on these trapeze/rectangles (
sic
!) suggest to me they have either never seen Geometric Kebaran and Mushabian microliths (although I understand that Neeley visited Goring-Morris' laboratory) or they cannot recognize microburin scars when they see them. In my original publication on the Mushabian (Phillips & Mintz 1977), they would see microburin scars on
lamelles scalènes
which were partially retouched in the Mushabian. Having recently analysed 12 Mushabian sites from Gebel Maghara, containing over 5000 microliths and 3000 microburins, and three new Geometric Kebaran sites from Sinai, containing over 800 trapeze/rectangles and no microburins, I can attest to the differences between these two assemblages in terms of reduction sequences, style of debitage, and the morphology of geometric and non-geometric microliths.
Dana Archaeological Survey, Phase I
- B Finlayson
- D Baird
Wadi Faynan Project, Phase 3. British Institute for Archaeology and History in Amman
- H Barnes
- M Flender
- I Ruben
- R Shafiq
- A Mcquitty
From Foraging to Farming. The Levant at theEnd of the Ice Age
- D O Henry
- Neeley N.P.
Survey and excavation in Wadi al-Hasa: A preliminary report of the 1993 season
- G A Clark
- D I Olszewski
- J Schuldenrein
- N Rida
- J D Eighmeg
Hunter-Gatherers in the Hebrides: The Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project 1988-1995. McDonald Institute: Cambridge
- S Mithen