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The Muddle in the Middle Pleistocene: The Lower–Middle Paleolithic Transition from the Levantine Perspective

Journal of World Prehistory volume 29, pages 1–78 (2016)Cite this article

Abstract

The terms Lower Palaeolithic and Middle Palaeolithic represent research constructs within which cultural evolution and prehistoric hominin behaviours can be studied, with the transition usually understood as marking a watershed in our evolution: an adaptation with a million-year record of success that gives way to something new. The interpretation of the Lower Palaeolithic Acheulian technocomplex is usually understood as a period of cultural stasis that extends over much of Africa and Eurasia, principally associated with Homo erectus. Those innovations that can be observed occur widely separated from one another in space and time. Yet a closer and more detailed examination of the Middle Pleistocene records from East Africa, southern Africa, Europe and the Levant reveals significant variation in cultural repertoires. A kind of paradox emerges, in which an Old World Lower Palaeolithic, apparently lacking an overall dynamic of distinctive and directed change in terms of cumulative variation over time, nevertheless culminates in a transition which sees the universal appearance of the Middle Palaeolithic. The two main hypotheses that have been advanced to explain the global transition, which happens essentially synchronously, appear mutually exclusive and contradictory. One view is that altered climatic-environmental constraints enabled and encouraged an ‘Out-of-Africa’ dispersal (or dispersals) of a new type of genus Homo. This cultural replacement model has been challenged more recently by the alternative hypothesis of accumulating but unrelated and temporally non-linked regional, and in fact potentially autochthonous, processes. The Levant, by virtue of its position bridging Africa and Eurasia (thus being the region into which any out-of-Africa groups would have had first to disperse into), must be seen as a critical region for assessing the relative merits of these competing hypotheses. This paper deals with the Lower–Middle Paleolithic boundary in the Levant within a long temporal perspective. The Middle Pleistocene record in the Levant enables us to examine the amplitude of variation within each techno-complex, as well as to question whether there are diachronic changes in the amplitude of techno-typological variations as well as changes in the manner by which they appear in the record. The results carry significant implications for understandings of demographic and societal processes during the Lower–Middle Paleolithic transition in the Levant.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is based on my doctoral research at the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I thank my advisor, Professor Erella Hovers, for her guidance, help, time, efforts and for her insights and comments on earlier versions of this paper. I thank Dr. Ofer Marder who allowed me to study the lithic materials from Revadim. I also thank Dr. Omry Barzilai who invited me to work with him on the Kefar Menahem West excavation. Professor Ofer Bar-Yosef provided access to the lithic materials from his excavation together with Gisis, I. in Zuttiyeh cave. I wish to thank Mrs. Alegre Savariego, Curator of the Rockefeller Collections and Mosaics, and Natalia Gubenko, Curator of Prehistoric Periods National Treasures Department, Israel Antiquities Authority for their help during this research. Figure 1 was produced by Mika Ullman and Michal Birkenfeld; Leonid Zeiger drew Fig. 2: 1–3, Fig. 3: 1, Fig. 4: 4. The 3-D image illustrations were produced by the Computerized Archaeology Laboratory at the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, using methods described in Grosman et al. (2008). I wish to thank L. Grosman, O. Harush and A. Ovadia from the Computerized Archaeology Laboratory, Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University. Figure 8 was drawn by Mika Ulman. Alex Bogdanovsky and Itay Abadi helped preparing Figs. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. I wish to thanks the following people for their advice, generous support and friendship over the years: Abadi, I., Agha, N., Alperson, N., Ashkenazi, H., Barzilai, O., Belfer-Cohen, A., Birkendeld, M., Brailovsky, L., Ekshtain, R., Goder-Goldberger, M., Goldsmith, Y., Goren-Inbar, N., Goring-Morris, N., Grosman, L., Herzlinger, G., Khalaily K., Krakovsky, M., Marder, O., Milevski, Y., Mitki, N., Schattner, U. Sharon, G., Sumner, A., Ulman, M., Wojtczak, D., Yeshrun, R., and Zaidner, Y. The final stage of the manuscript was written during my Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship in the University of Connecticut. I want to thank Adler, D., Smith, A., Hartman, G., and Munro, N. for hosting me in the department and making me feel at home. I wish to thank Christian Tryon and the two anonymous reviewers of my PhD for their comments. Finally, I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers of the paper and the editor of Journal of World Prehistory for their helpful comments that improved the paper greatly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel

    Ariel Malinsky-Buller

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, 354 Mansfield Road, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA

    Ariel Malinsky-Buller

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  1. Ariel Malinsky-Buller
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Appendix: Sites and Samples Chosen for the Current Study

Appendix: Sites and Samples Chosen for the Current Study

Kefar Menahem West

History of Research

Beginning in the 1950s, the area around the Kibbutz Kefar Menahem was surveyed over 30 years by Moshe Israel. A salvage excavation was carried out at this locality in 2005 (Barzilai et al. 2006). In 2011 and 2012 probe trenches were dug in order to radiometrically date the site (Malinsky-Buller et al., in preparation).

Excavated Area

The excavation included three areas. The main area, Area A (27.5 m2) and two smaller ones, Areas B and C (3 m2 and 5 m2) (Barzilai et al. 2006).

Stratigraphy

The archeological horizon is embedded above the unconformity between Hamra and quartzitic brown soil (Barzilai et al. 2006; Malinsky-Buller et al., in preparation).

Environment and Fauna

A few faunal remains were retrieved from Area A. These include tooth fragments and broken long-bones consistent in size with the cervids (pers. comm. R. Rabinovich). Paleoenvironmental reconstruction based on isotopic composition suggests that, during the last 780 ka, Mediterranean vegetation (C3 signals) dominated the landscape (Malinsky-Buller et al., in preparation).

Date

The chronological range for the site is 780 to 460 ka, based on the TT-OSL dating of the sediments and paleomagnetic analysis (Malinsky-Buller et al., in preparation).

The Lithic Assemblage and the Sample Studied

The assemblage analyzed includes all material retrieved from the excavation—793 artifacts larger than 2 cm (Barzilai et al. 2006; Table 2).

Revadim

History of Research

The site was discovered during quarrying activity in 1996, followed by salvage excavation (Marder et al. 1998) and another two seasons of excavations (1998–1999) directed by I. Saragusti, and O. Marder. Another salvage excavation occurred in 2004 (Marder et al. 2006, 2011).

Excavated Area

The 1996 excavation exposed an area of 22 m2 (Marder et al. 1998). The excavations held in 1998 and 1999 directed by I. Saragusti, and O. Marder uncovered an area of 27 m2. The 2004 salvage excavation exposed an area of more than 250 m2, including 80 m2 excavated in trenches (Marder et al. 2006, 2011).

Geological Stratigraphy

The Revadim sequence as defined by Gvirtzman and Wieder revealed 21 m of alternating paleosols comprising seven units (Gvirtzman et al. 1999; Marder et al. 1998; Wieder and Gvirtzman 1999). Some refinements were later established, and six units were described (Marder et al. 2006). The relevant layers for the current study are Unit 3: Red Paleosol, Hamra and Husmas (c. 2 m). An unconformity horizon above this unit occurred. Unit 2: quartzitic Gray-Brown Paleosol (c. 2–2.5 m) Gvirtzman et al. (1999) describe this unit as a loamy sand to sandy loam paleosol, with abundant carbonate nodules.

The Archeological Stratigraphy

The site contains two main areas, Area B and Area C located 70 m apart. The earliest occupation at the site occurred upon the unconformity horizon in both areas (Layers C5 and B2, Solodenko 2010). In Area B there is another layer (Layer B1), on top of Layer B2, while in Area C there are another three layers (Layers C3, C2 and C1). At Area C East correlated statigraphically with Layer C3, a taphonomical study enabled the separation of the layer into three primary deposition sub-layers (II–IV) (Malinsky Buller et al. 2011a, b).

Environment and Fauna

Straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), bovids (Bos primigenius, Gazella gazella), cervids (Dama mesopotamica, Cervus elaphus, Capreolus cf. capreolus), wild boar (Sus scrofa), equids, and carnivores (Felis silvestris) (Marder et al. 1998, 2011; Rabinovich et al. 2012). Paleoenvironmental reconstruction based on isotopic compositions suggests that during the archeological accumulation Mediterranean vegetation (C3 signals) dominated the landscape (Marder et al. 2011, figure 4).

Date

The paleomagnetic analysis of the entire section of the site gave a normal polarity signal (Gvirtzman et al. 1999). U-series on coating of carbonate crusts upon flint artifacts yielded dates between 300 ka and 500 ka and possibly older, setting the minimal age estimate for human occupation of the site.

The Lithic Assemblage and the Sample Studied

The studied sample for this analysis included the entire assemblages from Layer C3, C East excavated in 2004 (Malinsky-Buller et al. 2011b). For layer C2 a sample was taken from the Saragusti and Marder excavations (1998 and 1999), covering 5 m2. The squares chosen were those that were excavated to the fullest thickness of the layer, c. 20 cm.

Holon

History of Research

Three seasons of salvage excavations—in 1963, 1964, and 1970—were conducted at the site by Noy (Noy and Issar 1971; Yizraeli 1963, 1967).

Excavated Area

The estimated area of excavation varies among the different publications (e.g., Chazan 2007a: Figures 1.2, 1.7, 1.8; Noy and Issar 1971; Porat et al. 1999; Yizraeli 1967); Chazan (2007a) suggests an area of c. 264 m2, which will be used in this paper.

Geological Stratigraphy

According to Yizraeli (1967) the geological section comprises five geological strata from bottom to the top—Stratum E: kurkar (calcareous aeolianite), of which only the upper part was exposed; Stratum D: Hamra, c. 0.5 m thick; Stratum C: light gray clay of uneven thickness (1.7 m to 30 cm), within which the archeological layer was embedded; Stratum B: dark clay reaching a maximum thickness of 0.5 m; and, Stratum A: an upper Hamra layer, up to 2 m thick. The light gray clay comprising Stratum C was further divided into three sub-layers. The upper part is characterized by an abundance of carbonate nodules. The archaeological horizon lies in the middle part, in which fewer carbonate nodules are found. The lower part is sandier, with a minute amount of faunal remains. The uneven thickness of Stratum C reflects previous topographical changes of a stabilized dune.

The Archeological Stratigraphy

The lithic and faunal remains within the archeological layer are dispersed vertically over c. 60 cm (Yizraeli 1967). Later probe trenches by Porat et al. 1999 or a more extensive probe trench program by O. Marder and H. Khalaily (Malinsky-Buller 2014, figure 2) did not reveal any archeological remains.

Environment and Fauna

Straight-tusked elephants, Bovids (hippos, aurochs, mountain gazelle, wild cattle, wild boars), Cervids (fallow deer, red deer) (Davis and Lister 2007; Horwitz and Monchot 2007; Lister 2007; Monchot and Horwitz 2007).

Date

Porat et al. (1999, 2002) and Porat (2007) dated the yellow-brown clayey sand taken from their probe trenches to c. 200 ka. This layer was geologically correlated with the archaeological layer found by Noy. ESR samples of animal teeth that originated from the old excavations gave similar dates to that obtained by luminescence methods (Porat et al. 1999, 2002; Porat 2007). The Holon dates were questioned by Marder (2009), Gopher et al. (2010) and Bar-Yosef and Belmaker (2011), based on archeological reasoning. The ESR dates were questioned due to the lack of dosimetry measurement at the site (Mercier et al. 2000; Rink et al. 2004a, b). The latest probe trenches program demonstrated the intricate geological stratigraphy of the site, casting doubt on the geological correlations between the probe trenches and their suggested ages and the archeological layer excavated by Noy (Malinsky-Buller 2014, figure 2).

The Lithic Assemblage and the Sample Studied

The assemblage was first studied by the original excavator (Yizraeli 1967). Later Chazan (2000a, b, 2007b, c) published the material. In the current study, the entire collection was studied. Since sieving was not performed during the excavations at the site there is a bias toward larger pieces.

Zuttiyeh Cave

History of Research

The cave was excavated in 1925 by Turville-Petre (1927). Another small excavation occurred in 1973 (Gisis and Bar-Yosef 1974).

Excavated Area

A volume of 550 m3 was excavated by Turville-Petre (1927). The 1973 excavation conducted three soundings in the brecciated remnants within the cave (Gisis and Bar-Yosef 1974).

Geological Stratigraphy

The uppermost layer (0–1.2 m) includes recent material including goat dung, fragments of bone and potsherds of Roman to Byzantine periods. The second layer (1.2–2.0 m) contains large boulders that have fallen from the cave roof and walls. These boulders covered a layer of reddish sediment with fossil bones and numerous Paleolithic flint artifacts. The third layer (2.1–5.1) consists of yellowish sand with pebbles, some boulders and few artifacts. The fourth layer contains fine clays deposited upon the bedrock (Turville-Petre 1927; Bate 1927a, b). The excavation of Gisis and Bar-Yosef (1974) revealed a complex stratigraphy with the brecciated material.

The Archeological Stratigraphy

Turville-Petre (1927) defined the material as Mousterian. Garrod and Bate (1937) recognized that the Zuttiyeh assemblages constituted both Acheulo-Yabrudian and Levallois–Mousterian components. This recognition was later confirmed by the Gisis and Bar-Yosef excavation (1974).

Environment and Fauna

Bate (1927a, b) identified two separate assemblages differentiated by state of preservation, hardness and patina. The first seemed to belong to the Mousterian layers and the second to the lower layers (later determined as Acheuleo-Yabrudian). The assemblage contained bovids (Bison or Bos primigenius, Gazella gazella), cervids (Dama mesopotamica), wild boar (Sus scrofa), equids, and carnivores (Felis silvestris).

Human Remains

Part of a human skull, of unidentified species (from the base of the Acheuleo-Yabrudian layers).

Date

Schwartz et al. (1980), using uranium dating, date the lower layers to 148,000 BP, and the upper ones to about 95,000 BP; however, at least the first is unacceptable today as being too late to be Acheulo-Yabrudian. Valladas et al. (1998) analyzed by TL methods five datable flints taken from the Gisis and Bar-Yosef excavation. Three had a mean age of 106 ± 7 ka and two had a mean age of 157 ± 13. Flints from the underlying Acheulo-Yabrudian level were not datable by TL. Recently, U-series taken from the breccia gave a date range of 260–230 ka (Hovers et al., in press).

The Lithic Assemblage and the Sample Studied

The analysis of the lithic material from Zuttiyeh cave included two campaigns. A partial collection from the original excavations by Turville-Petre (1927) stored in the Rockefeller Muesum, Jerusalem (table X). In addition, I studied the assemblage derived from the excavation made by Gisis and Bar-Yosef (1974). The Turville-Petre collection is biased, as can be demonstrated by the relatively low number of artifacts kept from the original 550 m3, as well as the high frequency of retouched items, while the debitage were not kept. A comparison to the Gisis and Bar-Yosef collection highlights the biased nature of the Turville-Petre collection (Table 19). However, some observations can be made with regard to the periods represented in the Turville-Petre collection. In the Rockefeller collection, there are clear indications of Acheulo-Yabrdudian artifacts, as well as Middle Paleolithic Levalloisian artifacts. The retouched laminar artifacts contain elongated Mousterian points (Abu Sif points), a guiding fossil of the Early Middle Paleolithic period (Zaidner and Weinstein Evron 2012). The Levallois blades have mostly bipolar scar pattern with faceted platforms. The Levallois blades are wider in comparison to the blades with mostly unipolar scar pattern. Both non-Levallois and Levallois blades have a low percentage of cortex. Moreover, there are very few natural backed knives, which are an essential part of the Amudian blade flaking method (Garrod 1970; Copeland 2000; Shimelmitz et al. 2011, 2015). The recent dating program strengthens the indication for an Early Middle Paleolithic age for some of the Middle Paleolithic artifacts. Yet, within the Gisis and Bar-Yosef assemblages there are no indications for laminar production, either Amudian or EMP. Those artifacts attributed to the Middle Paleolithic from the Gisis and Bar-Yosef excavation do not contain guiding fossils that can refine our chronological attribution within the MP.

Table 19 General breakdown of Zuttiyeh material according to excavation year
Full size table

The sample studied for detailed typo-technological study includes 40 complete handaxes and 16 broken ones (51 from Turville-Petre’s collection and 5 from Gisis and Bar-Yosef’s). The scraper assemblage includes only 79 complete scrapers (66 from Turville-Petre’s collection and 13 from Gisis and Bar-Yosef’s).

Tabun Cave

History of Research

The first excavation at the cave by Garrod took place between the 1929 and 1931–1934 (Garrod and Bate 1937). In 1967–1971 Jelinek re-excavated the cave, sampling the section of the main stratigraphic profile (Jelinek et al. 1973; Jelinek 1975, 1982a, b, 1990). From 1975 to 2003 Ronen excavated the site (Gisis 2008; Gisis and Ronen 2006).

Excavated Area

Garrod excavated in all three chambers and removed thousands of cubic meters, almost emptying the intermediate chamber. Garrod exposed a 24 m thick sequence of deposits at the site (Garrod and Bate 1937). The second expedition, directed by A. J. Jelinek, took place in 1967–1971. Jelinek’s excavation focused on Garrod’s main section, located under the entrance of the inner chamber. Jelinek’s excavations were 10 m above the original section and 6 m wide, penetrating roughly 2 m into the intact profile. Ronen excavated the intermediate chamber as well as Garrod’s témoin in the northwest sector of the cave, and in addition a limited volume in the eastern part of Garrod’s main section (Gisis and Ronen 2006).

The Geological and Archeological Stratigraphy

Garrod divided the sequence into 6 archeological layers. Those are, from bottom up, Layer G—Tayacian (at the bottom); Layer F—Late Acheulean; Layer E—Acheulo-Micoqian, divided into 4 sub-layers; Layers D and C—Lower Levallois–Mousterian; Layer B, Upper Mousterian. Garrod later termed the Acheulo-Yabrudian (Garrod 1956, 1970). Jelinek’s excavation occurred at the interface of Garrod’s Layers C and B, with its lower part approximately at the base of Garrod’s Layer E (Jelinek et al. 1973). Jelinek recorded in his excavations a series of 14 major stratigraphical units with 86 layers (Beds 1–85 and 90), many of them with additional internal divisions (Jelinek 1982b, 1990). Unit I is chiefly correlated to Garrod’s Tabun C. Units II–VIII suffered to various extents from post-depositional processes leading to a mixture of finds in some of the layers within these units (Jelinek 1982b). Unit IX correlates to Garrod’s Layer D and is part of the earliest Middle Paleolithic occurrences at the cave excavated by Jelinek.

Environment and Fauna

Date

At Tabun cave several radiometric methods have been used in the past 30 years, mainly for Layer E and to a lesser extent for Layers C and D (Grun et al. 1991; McDermott et al. 1993; Mercier et al. 1995; Mercier et al. 2000; Mercier and Valladas 2003; Rink et al. 2004a; see summary of methods in Schwarcz and Rink 2001, figure 3). Initially there was incompatibility between the dates obtained by ESR and those obtained by TL. Unit IX was dated by TL to 263 ± 27 ka (Mercier et al. 1995; Mercier and Valladas 2003).

The Lithic Assemblage and the Sample Studied

The lithic assemblage of Unit IX from Jelinek excavation was studied. This unit is correlated with the earliest part of Garrod’s Layer D. The lithic assemblage of Unit IX (Beds 62–69) includes a total of 1651 lithic artefacts larger than 2 cm. (Jelinek 1982b, p. 75). Those are found in 17 m2, within a thick stratigraphical sequence of 1–1.5 m. The layer is unique in the low density of finds, as well as in burnt artifact percentages in comparison to earlier and later layers (Clark 2014; Shimelmitz et al. 2014a).

The lithic assemblage of Layer D was described by Garrod as containing a high frequency of Levalloisian products, which did not emphasize the blade component (Garrod and Bate 1937). Jelinek et al. (1973) described a sudden cultural change not related to the sedimentological sequence. He observed that the artifact density is low and artifacts are scattered evenly with a lack of preserved hearths. The absence of hearths was interpreted as signifying intermittent brief occupations of the cave during the deposition of Layer D. The high frequency of blades was described as an important characteristic of the lithic assemblages. The Unit IX assemblage was studied by many scholars from various scholarly traditions with different research aims. The first studies were by Jelinek and his students (Jelinek et al. 1973; Jelinek 1975, 1982a, b, 1990; Dibble 1981). Later research on samples of the original assemblages were conducted by Meignen (1994), Monigal (2002), Ashkenazi (2005) and lastly by Shimelmitz and Kuhn (2013). In this paper, I describe my re-examinations of the lithic assemblage of Unit IX (Table 14) comparing the current results with previous studies.

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Malinsky-Buller, A. The Muddle in the Middle Pleistocene: The Lower–Middle Paleolithic Transition from the Levantine Perspective. J World Prehist 29, 1–78 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-016-9092-1

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Keywords

  • Lower Paleolithic
  • Middle Paleolithic
  • Levant
  • Lithic technology
  • Biface
  • Levallois
  • Innovation processes