Natufian Period Research Articles

Studying the Significance of the Uninterrupted Occupation in the Archaeological Site of Pella in Jordan as a Sustainable Built Heritage

The Archaeological site of Pella in Jordan represents a continuous uninterrupted microcosm of settlements since the Natufian Period. The sequence of settlements embodies the heritage’s ability to self-sustain over many years, holding substantial power and value historically and geographically. Pella has become underdeveloped and vulnerable due to the lack of understanding of what the site has to offer. This paper highlights Pella’s unique heritage from how its name was derived, its geographic setting, historic interrelated characteristics of various periods, as well as the values, attributes, and opportunities it presents as a sustainable built heritage. This will strengthen the outstanding universal value OUV of the site that might lead it to get it inscribed as a World Heritage Site as well as promote and enhance the national and international advocacy for its preservation.

The Effects of Early Childhood Stress on Mortality under Neolithization in the Levant

Abstract. This study investigates the causal relationships among early-life health conditions, mortality across the lifespan, and population growth during neolithization in the Levant. We analyze a comprehensive sample of 558 human skeletons, associated with mortuary features from 24 Levantine sites spanning the transition to agriculture, from the Early Natufian period to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (Southern Levant) and Pottery Neolithic periods (Northern Levant), mainly covering 13,000-6,000 BC. We find that early-life stress—as preserved in linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH) that we recorded in the study sample—not only increased dramatically in prevalence with the adoption of agriculture and village life. Early-life stress was also strongly associated with mortality in the juvenile, adolescent, and younger-adult life stages (ca. 5-29 years). This statistical link is independent of analysis of raw life-stage-at-death distributions, which may be heavily biased by ancient age or sex-skewed funerary recruitment practices. According to our results, biological well-being deteriorated with the adoption of agriculture and village life between ca. 9,000-6,000 BC. We find that the transition to agriculture raised risks for premature mortality across the Levant. We suggest that in the regional transition to agriculture, mortality and fertility rose together in a fragile dynamic, the balance of which may have shifted in the 7th millennium BC, as a rapid rise in early-life stress exposures reduced average well-being.

The anurans and squamates assemblage from Final Natufian Eynan (Ain Mallaha, Israel) with an emphasis on snake-human interactions.

During the Natufian period, more than 12,000 years ago, Eynan (Ain Mallaha) was an important human settlement in the Hula Valley, Israel. This study concentrates on the anuran and squamate assemblage from the ultimate stage of the Natufian period at the site, the Final Natufian. Over five thousand bones assigned to at least sixteen taxa were studied from a sampled segment of the excavated open-air site. Relative species abundance, spatial distribution, taphonomic observations and ecological considerations all pointed to the conclusion that the inhabitants of Eynan intensively exploited three large “colubrine” snakes species: the Large Whip Snake (Dolichophis jugularis), the Eastern Montpellier Snake (Malpolon insignitus) and an Eastern Four-lined Ratsnake (Elaphe cf. sauromates). These snakes were the most desired and were intensively gathered, while other snakes and lizards could have been opportunistically collected when encountered. We raise questions about whether the large “colubrines” exploitation should be interpreted as additional evidence of increasing diet breadth. We suggest challenging this line of reasoning and offer possible alternative motives.

ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ СЕМИТСКОГО КОРНЯ (культурно-исторический аспект)

The paper considers the long-ago perceived, but inadequately studied phenomenon of the Semitic root triconsonantism. Some examples of the paradigm realization from the Biblical Hebrew, where the adducing of the third consonant to a 2C-root (biconsonantal) results in the formation of a cluster of the semantically related 3C-roots, are provided. A similar process is noted in other language families that constitute the Afroasiatic phylum. Here it is argued that the phenomenon can be viewed diachronically as a consequence of certain economic, social, and cultural changes during the Natufian period (12 500 – 10 500 BP) in the Near East. Due to the material innovations in agriculture, the Natufians were able to store the agricultural surpluses, and their everyday life became more organized and safer. A hypothesis is made that sociocultural changes during the Paleolithic–Neolithic transition influenced the mundane life of the multiplied and urbanized Natufians, who could now rely on food stocks which allowed them to indulge in idle contacts. These changes led, in turn, to an incentive for spiritual progress and ultimately provided a staging ground for oral lore. The new Neolithic reality demanded novel means of expression that were created by the compounding of 3C-roots (among them, the roots bearing an abstract meaning) from the existing 2C-roots.

Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan

The origins of bread have long been associated with the emergence of agriculture and cereal domestication during the Neolithic in southwest Asia. In this study we analyze a total of 24 charred food remains from Shubayqa 1, a Natufian hunter-gatherer site located in northeastern Jordan and dated to 14.6-11.6 ka cal BP. Our finds provide empirical data to demonstrate that the preparation and consumption of bread-like products predated the emergence of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. The interdisciplinary analyses indicate the use of some of the "founder crops" of southwest Asian agriculture (e.g., Triticum boeoticum, wild einkorn) and root foods (e.g., Bolboschoenus glaucus, club-rush tubers) to produce flat bread-like products. The available archaeobotanical evidence for the Natufian period indicates that cereal exploitation was not common during this time, and it is most likely that cereal-based meals like bread become staples only when agriculture was firmly established.

NATUFIAN INTERACTIONS ALONG THE JORDAN VALLEY

Building on recent observations made by Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris, this study proposes that a zone of intensive interaction existed between communities in the Jordan Valley during much of the Early Natufian period (c. 12,500–11,000 cal bc). Recently published data demonstrate distinctive and even unique links between open-air Jordan Valley sites. Whereas some models have utilised specific types of material culture (e.g. bone artefacts or art items) to identify cultural provinces in the Natufian, this enquiry uses multiple categories of evidence (site types, shared artefact types, artefacts with close stylistic similarities, embodied behavioural practices, and raw material movements) to propose a Natufian sub-region in the Jordan Valley. The likely existence of a post-Lisan “Damya Lake” is suggested as a rationale for extensive north–south contexts south along the Rift Valley, especially for the transport of heavy materials such as basaltic rock. In the future, scientific techniques such as the isotopic analysis of human skeletal remains, elemental characterisation of raw material source, and reliable dating of excavated sites will prove to be decisive in evaluating the model.

Climate change, adaptive cycles, and the persistence of foraging economies during the late Pleistocene/Holocene transition in the Levant

Climatic forcing during the Younger Dryas (∼12.9-11.5 ky B.P.) event has become the theoretical basis to explain the origins of agricultural lifestyles in the Levant by suggesting a failure of foraging societies to adjust. This explanation however, does not fit the scarcity of data for predomestication cultivation in the Natufian Period. The resilience of Younger Dryas foragers is better illustrated by a concept of adaptive cycles within a theory of adaptive change (resilience theory). Such cycles consist of four phases: release/collapse (Ω); reorganization (α), when the system restructures itself after a catastrophic stimulus through innovation and social memory--a period of greater resilience and less vulnerability; exploitation (r); and conservation (K), representing an increasingly rigid system that loses flexibility to change. The Kebarans and Late Natufians had similar responses to cold and dry conditions vs. Early Natufians and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A responses to warm and wet climates. Kebarans and Late Natufians (α-phase) shifted to a broader-based diet and increased their mobility. Early Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A populations (r- and K-phases) had a growing investment in more narrowly focused, high-yield plant resources, but they maintained the broad range of hunted animals because of increased sedentism. These human adaptive cycles interlocked with plant and animal cycles. Forest and grassland vegetation responded to late Pleistocene and early Holocene climatic fluctuations, but prey animal cycles reflected the impact of human hunting pressure. The combination of these three adaptive cycles results in a model of human adaptation, showing potential for great sustainability of Levantine foraging systems even under adverse climatic conditions.

14C Dating of the Early Natufian at El-Wad Terrace, Mount Carmel, Israel: Methodology and Materials Characterization

The Natufian (15–11.5 kyr BP) sites in the southern Levant are characterized by a lack of macrobotanical remains, including charcoal, and poor preservation of bone collagen. As a result, only about 30 reliable radiocarbon dates are available for building a chronology of the Natufian period. Here, we present new 14C data from the Natufian site of el-Wad terrace that fall in the range of the Early Natufian period. Using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis, we investigated the environmental factors that influenced the preservation of material for 14C dating of the site, and we tested a modified pretreatment method for poorly preserved charcoal samples. The normal pretreatment protocol for 14C samples (W-ABA) removed more charcoal material than the modified method, which omits the first acid treatment (W-BA). This first acid step seems to enhance the extraction of humic substances during the subsequent base step. We found that the poor preservation of charcoal could be attributed to the presence of calcite, and therefore an alkaline pH of sediments. The most important factor determining bone collagen preservation may have been the hydrological setting, i.e. fluctuating water levels due to oversaturation of the dense sediments after rainfall.

NATUF TOPLULUKLARINDA DİŞ ÇEKİMİ VE YEREL KİMLİK

Since the earliest stages of anthropological studies, researchers have suspected that the Natufian populations practiced tooth evulsion. A comprehensive study of the Epipalaeolithic Levantine dental collections does indeed show an abnormal rate of ante mortem loss of the central upper incisors, which supports this cultural inter­pretation. Tooth removal is found in roughly 20% of the adult and subadult populations (sometimes as early as adolescence), and seems to have been practiced equally on females and males. For all Natufian groups in which this practice has been found, the removal seems to be concentrated primarily on the right upper incisor. The left upper incisor may also be removed, but this appears to be a secondary option. Combining this infor­mation with contextual data provides insight into the meanings of this practice. First, the individuals concerned are sometimes buried next to each other, which reinforces the idea that they are of comparable social statuses. Second, the practice seems to spread into the Galilee's major sites only at the very end of the Natufian period, and thus acts as a testimony to the evolution of a regional identity overtime.

BURIAL PRACTICES IN JORDAN FROM THE NATUFIANS TO THE PERSIANS

Jordan, rich in archaeological sites and the related funerary attributes, has the potential to reconstruct the life of past societies and deduce burial practices that, in turn, may assist in understanding these societies and tracking the changes of social adjustments chronologically. This study utilizes archaeological reports and manuscripts to synthesize the social archaeology in Jordan from the Natufian period to the Persian. The study shows a prominent variability in burial practices over the various archaeological periods that were triggered by culture change, where the latter was imposed by the intertwined socio-political and environmental factors. The simplicity or complexity in burial practices followed those of the society itself, where burial types and practices started as simple during the Natufian period and gradually intensified and complicated in the latter periods.

Early evidence ( ca. 12,000 B.P.) for feasting at a burial cave in Israel

Feasting is one of humanity's most universal and unique social behaviors. Although evidence for feasting is common in the early agricultural societies of the Neolithic, evidence in pre-Neolithic contexts is more elusive. We found clear evidence for feasting on wild cattle and tortoises at Hilazon Tachtit cave, a Late Epipaleolithic (12,000 calibrated years B.P.) burial site in Israel. This includes unusually high densities of butchered tortoise and wild cattle remains in two structures, the unique location of the feasting activity in a burial cave, and the manufacture of two structures for burial and related feasting activities. The results indicate that community members coalesced at Hilazon to engage in special rituals to commemorate the burial of the dead and that feasts were central elements in these important events. Feasts likely served important roles in the negotiation and solidification of social relationships, the integration of communities, and the mitigation of scalar stress. These and other social changes in the Natufian period mark significant changes in human social complexity that continued into the Neolithic period. Together, social and economic change signal the very beginning of the agricultural transition.

Vegetation development and human occupation in the Damascus region of southwestern Syria from the Late Pleistocene to Holocene

Rockshelter Baaz in the Damascus region of Syria provided a variety of botanical remains from the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene period. These remains provide new information about the vegetation evolution in this region. The earliest occupational levels correspond with a moisture peak during the Late Pleistocene, between ca. 34–32 kyr b.p., when pine expanded. The next occupations took place during extreme arid conditions, ca. 23–21 kyr b.p., and probably during the Last Glacial Maximum when a steppe vegetation was established. The occupation level of the Younger Dryas, represented by Natufian remains, suggests that the area had been covered by almond-pistachio steppe, similar to later periods of the Early Holocene, and was probably located just outside the range of dense wild cereal stands. There is no drastic impact of the Younger Dryas visible on the vegetation in the botanical remains. The lack of fruits and seeds at Baaz indicates that the site was more likely to have been a temporary hunting post rather than a plant processing site for much of its history. It is ideally suited to this purpose because of its location over the Jaba′deen Pass and the associated springs. However, archaeological remains from the Natufian period, suggest that the site was more permanently occupied during this time.

Zooarchaeological Measures of Hunting Pressure and Occupation Intensity in the Natufian

Climatic change, population pressure, and environmental stress are frequently cited as major catalysts for the adoption of agriculture. The role of these factors immediately prior to the agricultural transition in the southern Levant is here explored by reconstructing human economic and demographic conditions in the Natufian period. Thorough processing of gazelle carcasses for edible products including meat, marrow, and bone grease and the capture of abundant juvenile animals reflect intensive yet stable ungulateprocurement strategies across the Natufian. Despite this stability, a dramatic shift in the ratio of high to lowranked game at the Early/Late Natufian boundary signals a reduction in siteoccupation intensity and increased population mobility immediately prior to the agricultural transition. Contrary to current models, the faunal evidence suggests not that agriculture was adopted in immediate response to the cooling and drying of the Younger Dryas but that the Late Natufians embraced more costeffective demographic solutions for coping with environmental stress.

The Garbage Crisis in prehistory: artefact discard patterns at the Early Natufian site of Wadi Hammeh 27 and the origins of household refuse disposal strategies

Concepts of refuse behavior and site abandonment have been developed that show potential to distinguish degrees of mobility and sedentism among past human communities. Whereas much of this work had been conducted in ethnographic situations or on recent sites, this study makes an initial attempt to apply this body of theory to the archaeological record of humanity's most fundamental settlement transition: from mobile hunter-gatherer to settled village farmer. The centerpiece of the study is an analysis of artefact distribution patterns in the Natufian site of Wadi Hammeh 27 (ca. 12,000 years BP), which is combined with a diachronic overview of data from earlier and later sites, dating from 20,000 to 8000 years BP. We conclude that human communities in the Natufian period had not yet tailored their indifferent household refuse disposal practices to the long-term requirements of sedentary living. Subsequently, there occurs a punctuated gradient of change in the Levantine sequence, towards higher rates of secondary refuse disposal. Elementary efforts at refuse disposal begin in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period (ca. 10,300–9200 years BP), and some form of consistent garbage cycling was probably a standard feature in many villages by the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (ca. 9200–8000 years BP).

Long-term trends in Natufian subsistence: a use-wear analysis of ground stone tools

The author studied intensification of plant use (including cereal consumption) during the Natufian period of the Levant, using microscopic analysis of use-wear on 166 basalt grinding stones from Natufian sites. These prehistoric grinding surfaces were compared to those created on an experimental collection of basalt stones used for known tasks. The Natufian tools were judged to have been used for a variety of purposes, including hide working, legume processing, cereal processing, and mineral grinding. There seemed, however, to be a clear increase over time in the use of grinding slabs with flat surfaces, suitable for reducing cereals and legumes to tinier particles, with a concomitant increase in the release of nutrients. This trend may help explain the appearance of agriculture at the end of the Natufian.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Late Natufian at 'Iraq ed-Dubb, Jordan

Excavations at the cave of Traq ed-Dubb, Jordan, help clarify our understanding of the transition from foraging to farming in the Near East. The people who occupied the site in the Late Natufian period (13,500–11,500 B.P) were a relatively mobile group who used the cave as a temporary base camp for local foraging and hunting. In contrast, the occupants in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period (11,500–10,500 B.P) constructed at least two stone residences, with food processing features, inside the cave. This study provides a detailed consideration of the timing of the earliest sedentary farmers at Traq ed-Dubb, and elucidates the nature of differences in architecture between these periods, reflecting upon the implications of the transition to food production, which appears to have taken place less rapidly than previously assumed.

Approaches to Prehistoric Diet Breadth, Demography, and Prey Ranking Systems in Time and Space

Zooarchaeological data on small game use hold much potential for identifying and dating Paleolithic demographic pulses in time and space, such as those associated with modern human origins and the evolution of food-producing economies. Although small animals were important to human diets throughout the Middle, Upper, and Epi-Paleolithic periods in the Mediterranean Basin, the types of small prey emphasized by foragers shifted dramatically over the last 200,000 years. Slow-growing, slow-moving tortoises, and marine mollusks dominate the Middle Paleolithic record of small game exploitation. Later, agile, fast-maturing animals became increasingly important in human diets, first birds in the early Upper Paleolithic, and soon thereafter hares and rabbits. While the findings of this study are consistent with the main premise of Flannery's Broad Spectrum Revolution (BSR) hypothesis (Flannery, K. V. (1969). In Ucko, P. J., and Dimbleby, G. W. (eds.), The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals, Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, pp. 73–100), it is now clear that human diet breadth began to expand much earlier than the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. Ranking small prey in terms of work of capture (in the absence of special harvesting tools) proves far more effective in this investigation of human diet breadth than taxonomy-based diversity analyses published previously. Our analyses expose a major shift in human predator–prey dynamics involving small game animals by 50–40 KYA in the Mediterranean Basin, with earliest population growth pulses occurring in the Levant. In a separate application to the Natufian period (13–10 KYA), just prior to the rise of Neolithic societies in the Levant, great intensification is apparent from small game use. This effect is most pronounced at the onset of this short culture period, and is followed by an episode of local depopulation during the Younger Dryas, without further changes in the nature of Natufian hunting adaptations. An essential feature of the diachronic and synchronic approaches outlined here is controlling the potentially conflating effects of spatial (biogeographic) and temporal variation in the faunal data sets.

Lagomorph Remains at Prehistoric Sites in Israel and Southern Sinai.

This paper presents a study of lagomorph (Lepus capensis) bone assemblages from nine southern Levantine prehistoric sites, namely Hayonim Terrace, Hayonim Cave, Kebara Cave, Nahal Hemar Cave, Netiv Hagdud and Ohalo II and southern Sinai (Abu Madi I, Ujrat-el-Mehed and Wadi Tbeiq), over a period spanning the Middle Palaeolithic to the pre-pottery Neolithic B. Since the Middle Pleistocene the cape hare (Lepus capensis) has been the only species of lagomorph known from this region. A taphonomic analysis is given for the various sites. The density of bones identified as from Lepus capensis, taken as the ratio of either the NISP or the MNI to the excavation volume, was greatest at Hayonim Terrace and layer В of Hayonim Cave, of the Natufian period, for both measures. These results confirm previous work which showed a modest increase in the proportion of lagomorph remains relative to rodents from certain pre-Natufian sites, but a quantum increase during the Natufian period. As the hare is highly agile, trapping and/or netting techniques may have been in use from the Natufian period onwards, and cordage remains found in the early Upper Epipalaeolithic site of Ohalo II indicate that this would have been possible. In this paper we argue that a widening in the spectrum of food consumption is one ultimate consequence of sedentism, an event which took place in the southern Levant at the dawn of the Natufian. The shift from ephemeral and/or seasonal occupation to a prolonged habitation of relatively large communities in the earliest Natufian had a far reaching impact on the proximate environment, leading people to exploit new resources that included smaller-sized mammals (mainly hares), birds (among which partridges are dominant), reptiles and land snails, as well as to practice cultural control on gazelles.

Oxygen isotopic composition of mammalian skeletal phosphate from the Natufian Period, Hayonim Cave, Israel: Diagenesis and paleoclimate

Recent and fossil (prehistoric, Natufian) gazelle bones, dentin and enamel were analyzed for their oxygen isotopic composition (δ18O) of the phosphate and carbonate, as well as their crystallinity. Fossil bones and dentin have better crystallinity than recent specimens, indicating diagenetic change. Fossil enamel, on the other hand, is identical in crystallinity to recent enamel, indicating the lack of diagenetic alteration. Comparison of δ18O of carbonate and phosphate of the skeletal elements suggests that the coexisting phosphate and carbonate of both the recent and fossil specimens are close to isotopic equilibrium. This might suggest that both phases were affected by the same degree of diagenetic alteration, and that comparison of their δ18O is not useful for the selection of pristine material for paleoclimatic reconstruction purposes. Oxygen isotope analysis of gazelle enamel from the Natufian period from Hayonim Cave, Israel, show depletion in δ18O in comparison with recent enamel. This depletion is interpreted to represent a colder and/or wetter climate in the Natufian of northern Israel. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Natufian gazelles: Proto-domestication reconsidered

During the Natufian period of Israel (c. 12,500-10,200 bp), mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) remains are dominant in zooarchaeological assemblages, indicating intensive exploitation of this species. This phenomenon has generated much speculation about possible selective hunting practices or even domestication. A recent study suggested that Natufian gazelles exhibited a morphological pattern (diminution and increased variation) that could be interpreted as the result of intensive human sex-culling, or “proto-domestication”. We statistically analysed the published data and found no evidence for dwarfing or increased variation in Natufian gazelles, and thus no support for a hypothesis of “proto-domestication”. However, we analysed the published sample statistics; careful analysis of the raw data may reveal a pattern that eludes us. We call for such an analysis to settle this important point.