Twenty Thousand-Year-Old Huts at a Hunter-Gatherer Settlement in Eastern Jordan

Lisa A Maher,Matthew D Jones,Louise Martin,Tobias Richter,Jay T Stock,Danielle Macdonald,Michael D Petraglia

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031447

Abstract

Ten thousand years before Neolithic farmers settled in permanent villages, hunter-gatherer groups of the Epipalaeolithic period (c. 22–11,600 cal BP) inhabited much of southwest Asia. The latest Epipalaeolithic phase (Natufian) is well-known for the appearance of stone-built houses, complex site organization, a sedentary lifestyle and social complexity—precursors for a Neolithic way of life. In contrast, pre-Natufian sites are much less well known and generally considered as campsites for small groups of seasonally-mobile hunter-gatherers. Work at the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic aggregation site of Kharaneh IV in eastern Jordan highlights that some of these earlier sites were large aggregation base camps not unlike those of the Natufian and contributes to ongoing debates on their duration of occupation. Here we discuss the excavation of two 20,000-year-old hut structures at Kharaneh IV that pre-date the renowned stone houses of the Natufian. Exceptionally dense and extensive occupational deposits exhibit repeated habitation over prolonged periods, and contain structural remains associated with exotic and potentially symbolic caches of objects (shell, red ochre, and burnt horn cores) that indicate substantial settlement of the site pre-dating the Natufian and outside of the Natufian homeland as currently understood.

Highlights

Archaeologists have conventionally associated the origins of stone-built architecture with the Late Epipalaeolithic (Natufian) c. 14,500 years ago, and suggest that they represent the first semisedentary settlements, marking a critical threshold in human evolution [1,2,3]
Kharaneh IV covers an area of c. 21,000 m2, making it the largest known Late Pleistocene site in the region
The discovery of a number of Late Pleistocene sites in eastern Jordan, some of which are similar in size and density to Kharaneh IV [8], emphasize recent acknowledgment that areas such the Azraq Basin may have formed settlement refugia during harsher periods of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) [14,15,16]

Summary

Introduction

Archaeologists have conventionally associated the origins of stone-built architecture with the Late Epipalaeolithic (Natufian) c. 14,500 years ago, and suggest that they represent the first semisedentary settlements, marking a critical threshold in human evolution [1,2,3]. Along with Ohalo II and other Early Epipalaeolithic structures discussed below, they are among the earliest and best preserved dwellings yet found in the region These dwellings provide new insights into the nature of settlement in the Azraq Basin 20,000 years ago and help to chart the development of early architecture in southwest Asia. They reinforce a great time depth for the development and flourishing of architecture, prolonged site occupation, and emergent village life prior to the Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian

Methods

Results

Conclusion