Synonyms
The Haua
Introduction
The Haua Fteah, in northeastern Libya (32°53′59″ N; 22°03′05″ E), is a large and imposing cave 1 km south of the Mediterranean coast at an elevation of 67 m asl. It was excavated in the 1950s by Charles McBurney (McBurney, 1967) and re-excavated between 2007 and 2012 by Graeme Barker and Tim Reynolds (Barker et al., 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012; Rabbett et al., 2013).
Geomorphology
The cave lies on the edge of a large doline, or sinkhole, one of several in the area. It most probably reached its present morphology when the doline intersected with a pre-existing cave of phreatic origin, with further modification by granular disintegration and episodic roof falls.
The cave fill
The filling of the cave is contiguous with, and interfingers with, the doline fill. The sequence contains 15.5 m of well-stratified sediments dating from late OIS 6 to the present. Most of the sequence consists of silty diamicts (poorly sorted deposits with different particle sizes)...
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Bibliography
Barker, G., Hunt, C., and Reynolds, T., 2007. The Haua Fteah, Cyrenaica (Northeast Libya): renewed investigations of the cave and its landscape 2007. Libyan Studies, 38, 93–114.
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Barker, G., Bennett, P., Farr, L., Hill, E., Hunt, C., Lucarini, G., Morales, J., Mutri, G., Prendergast, A., Pryor, A., Rabett, R., Reynolds, T., Spry-Marques, P., and Twati, M., 2012. The Cyrenaican Prehistory Project 2012: the fifth season of investigations of the Haua Fteah cave. Libyan Studies, 43, 115–136.
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Hunt, C., Davison, J., Inglis, R., Farr, L., Barker, G., Reynolds, T., Simpson, D., el-Rishi, H., and Barker, G., 2010. Site formation processes in caves: the Holocene sediments of the Haua Fteah, Cyrenaica, Libya. Journal of Archaeological Science, 37(7), 1600–1611.
Hunt, C. O., Gilbertson, D. D., Hill, E. A., and Simpson, D., 2015. Sedimentation and chronologies in archaeologically-important caves: problems and prospects. Journal of Archaeological Science, 56, 109–116.
Inglis, R. H., 2012. Human occupation and changing environments during the middle to later stone age: soil micromorphology at the Haua Fteah, Libya (unpublished PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
McBurney, C. B. M., 1967. The Haua Fteah (Cyrenaica) and the Stone Age of the South-East Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rabbett, R., Farr, L., Hill, E., Hunt, C., Lane, R., Moseley, H., Stimpson, C., and Barker, G., 2013. The Cyrenaican Prehistory Project 2012: the sixth season of excavations in the Haua Fteah cave. Libyan Studies, 44, 113–125.
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Hunt, C.O. (2017). Haua Fteah. In: Gilbert, A.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_84
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_84
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