A Note on Biases in Early Excavations at Mugharet El-Wad and Nahal Oren

Abstract

Chipped stone artifacts usually comprise the bulk of recovered materials from the archaeological sites of the ear Her span of prehistory. As such, they are used to describe and characterize particular time spans, as well as geographical regions within those time spans. It is imperative, therefore, that these descriptions and characterizations be as accurate as possible. It is widely recognized, however, that early excavators in most parts of the world used excavation techniques that usually did not recover the data in such meticulous detail. The lack of sieving at most early excavations and the focus on the retention of characteristic tool types are two such biases. Two techniques hold potential for studying these biases and contributing important information that is otherwise lacking. One is the excavation of relevant remaining portions of a site (if these still exist), and the other is to examine the chipped stone artifacts that were not collected and that can be found in the old backdirt deposits. Recently, two small backdirt collections have been analyzed in this regard.! These represent the Natufian context from Garrod's excavations at Mugharet el-Wad, which encompass both Layers BI and B2 (Garrod 1932a, 1932b; Garrod and Bate 1937), and the Natufian context from Stekelis and Yizraely excavations at Nahal Oren (Stekelis and Yizraely 1963). Both samples were collected in the late 1960s. Tables I and 2 present the numerical and percentage data relating to these two assemblages. The tool typology used is that of Hours (Hours 1974). While not useful for distinguishing the chronological periods at Mugharet el-Wad and Nahal Oren, these data indicate the types of collection biases operating during early excavations in the Levant. The backdirt collections from Mugharet el-Wad and Nahal Oren contain high frequencies of non-geometric microliths, as well as retouched pieces (Hours type H), at el-Wad, and perforators. This suggests that these small types of tools, as well as opportunistic tools (retouched pieces), were often not recovered in the early excavations, and that subsequent publication of lithic assemblage descriptions from these sites overrepresents the other tool classes.