Les industries archaïques au Proche-Orient

Abstract

The Middle East (from the Mediterranean coast to Iran and from the Red Sea to the Black Sea) is located at the crossroads of African, Asian and European continents. It is a compulsory route well-trodden during the dispersal of the first humans out of Africa. Recent discoveries, mainly in Syria, Jordan and Israel, show that the first settlements in this area date back to over 2 million years (Ma). The location of the deposits containing archaic industries of the Oldowan type in the broad sense, often called “Core and Flake Industries”, indicates that several roads have been repeatedly used to connect Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula with the Euphrates and the Tiger basins. From south to north, if the coastal road and the tectonic depression of the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley and the Beqaa were privileged places of very old settlements, the desert roads through Jordan and Syria were also readily used even before 2 Ma. We can observe at least three successive stages of archaic industries. During the oldest one, from about 2.5 to 1.8 Ma, choppers, chopping-tools, cores and flakes are prevailing without traces of intentional retouching (Sites of Aïn Al Fil in Syria, of the Zarqa Valley in Jordan in particular). This period might be named Pre-Oldowan or Lower Oldowan. From approximately 1.8 to 1.3 Ma, a similar culture developed with the additional presence of regular polyhedrons and sometimes a rough bifacial shaping as well as the beginning of rare intentional retouching other than that of use-wear; we will call it Upper Oldowan (Lower G-Hummal in Syria, Bizat Ruhama and Lower Ubeidiya in Israel). Starting around 1.3 Ma, coarse bifaces begin to appear, always knapped with a stone hammer. This technology points to the transition towards Acheulean industries. The first bifaces appeared within a very Oldowan technological background (Hummal, Ubeidiya). However, in the Levant, sites often considered as “pre-Acheulean” because they lacked bifaces, though they belonged to more recent periods, younger than 1.3 Ma, have been termed “Tayacian” in order to underline their difference from Acheulean properly speaking. They seem contemporary with the first Acheulean phases and could correspond to a final Oldowan. The question remains, however, whether these are non-Acheulean cultures or “Acheuleans without bifaces”.