PALAEOLITHIC BACKGROUND
The time frame of today’s lecture includes the
so-called Upper Palaeolithic (ca. 30,000-12,000 BC), especially its later part,
and Epi-Palaeolithic (ca. 12,000-8,000) periods the latter being the period
which directly anticipated settled life based on farming (sometimes called the
period of Incipient Agriculture).
Palaeolithic Summary
1. The
Palaeolithic Period covers vast spans of time and space in the Middle East from
500,000 years ago until about 10,000 years ago. Given the generally sparse archaeological remains of hunting
bands and inconsistent coverage, (by far the most work done in the Levant and
northern Zagros) it’s easy to confine interpretations to specific regions where
work is done and to ignore others.
2. The
Palaeolithic archaeological record, with all of its inconsistencies and huge
gaps is not one of stasis as somewhat depicted. In fact it represents a general trend continuing over many
thousands of years in which a dominant nomadic hunting way of life changed to
one in which sedentary villagers depended on domesticated plants and
animals. The many stone tools types and
settlement forms from this period are the scant remains of the universal human
drive to sustain and where necessary improve its condition.
3. Specifically, we see this long trend driven by
constant experimentation with different food producing strategies and their
accompanying social developments that confronted the specific opportunities
raised by particular ecological conditions.
Again we see general trends characterized by diversity - human
creativity applied to specific challenges.
4. We can best trace this process in its entirety
in the archaeological record of the Levant with some important but localized
input from Anatolia, the Zagros Mts. and Upper Egypt. Elsewhere archaeological research on the area is too incomplete
to be very helpful although we can assume that similar processes were
occurring.
Upper and Epi-Palaeolithic Cultures
of the Levant
1. The
Upper Palaeolithic was marked by the spread of the Aurignacian-like tool
industries and their successors into the Middle East after 35,000 BP. These industries represented a much more
diverse set of tool forms that probably accompanied the move from a primary
subsistence base of generalized big-game-hunting to a more varied base as other
food resources came into play.
2. For much of the Upper Palaeolithic the Middle East area was occupied by mostly by hunters who were depended largely on the killing of deer and wild cattle. Their sites were distributed widely through the Levant, mostly in highland caves and rock shelters.
3.
Because the coastal areas of the Levant offered a rich and varied
environment for prehistoric hunters, they did not have to move around over
large distances like the hunters further east or to move as often because of
the greater access by animals to a wide range of food. Thus from the earliest times the Levant
promoted a relatively stable settlement pattern by contrast to the wide-ranging
seasonal migrations seen elsewhere.
This pattern intensifies in the later, Epi-Palaeolithic, Period
5. The Mount Carmel Cave Sites illustrate the
history of the region. Here a long
occupation dates back through the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic with Tabun and
Shkul and finally Kebara Caves.
1. The Kebaran occupation of the Mt. Carmel area
spans the late Upper Palaeolithic and the early Epi-Palaeolithic (ca
15,000-11,000 BC), a time of increasing rainfall in the Levant. Kabaran populations could exploit a wide
range of hunting in a small area, enabling a fairly stable life-style. Goats were plentiful on the mountains and
cliffs, deer and wild cattle in the wooded wadis, gazelle herds on the coastal
plains; pigs and fowl in the swampy coastal areas.
2.
However, while Kabaran people primarily depended on hoofed animals for
their subsistence, they also began to exploit the wider micro-environmental
potential of the Levant. Thus their
subsistence base expanded to include the specific local resources of
neighboring environmental zones such as fish, mollusks, birds and plant
food. This Kebaran development was
centered in the Southern Levant where conditions were wettest and most
favorable to a variety of wild resources.
8. The
Kabaran tool inventory reflect this specialization process and include small
microlithic blades of geometric form, a series of long narrow pointed
blades. Also bone awls and hooks.
9. Very
significantly, some Kebaran blades have been found with silica sheen, (deposit
caused by cutting plants) and grinding stones - indicate that wild cereals were
being processed, a development that anticipates plant domestication.
10. After
12,000 BC a warming and wetter climate caused by receding ice sheets allowing
the spread of grasslands into the plains adjacent to the Levant highlands. A minority of late Kabaran sites are found
in open areas of the plains with the beginnings of rudimentary settlements i.e:
Ein Gev - with grinding stones showing wild barley use, and circular
semi-subterranean house and formal pit burial suggesting incipient sedentism.
1. From 11,000-8000 BC. this pattern of
semi-sedentism and micro-environmental exploitation of a select number of
plants and animals intensified throughout the Levant, introducing incipient
village life to the entire region including all physical zones.
2. Large,
mostly-permanent settlements with satellite hunting camps were located near lowland
springs (Jericho), lakes (Mallaha), and on the rain-fed wooded hills (Wadi
Natuf cave). Permanent Natufian
villages comprised semi-circular houses (50 at Mallaha with 200-300 people)
with central hearths arranged around an open area with in-house burials under
the floors. Indicates social groupings
and ancestral reverence that sets up a long lasting tradition in the
Levant.
3. Natufian technology included more elaborate
blade industries, with small “microliths” set into sickle handles, grinding
stones and storage pits showing the harvesting and storage of cereals.
4. Hunting and gathering continued to play a
major role in the subsistence with gazelle, deer, wild cattle, wild pigs, wild
goats, fish, wild wheat, barley, nuts and fruits all being used in large
quantities. Indeed, for a considerable time following the initial emergence of
villages, hunting vied with cereal use and ultimately farming as the primary
food technology with domestication only gradually reaching the point where the
process became irreversible.
5. The first domesticate – the dog – appears in
Natufian times, probably to help in hunting.
6. Art
now appears with elaborate headdresses on female burials, animal and human
figurines (esp. female),and bead ornaments. This possibly heralded the
beginning of a widespread Neolithic ideology centered on ancestral reverence
and on female-centered religious cults that later developed into the great
Earth goddesses of the Middle East civilizations.
7.
Finally, around 9,000 BC renewed aridity caused the successors of the
Natufians to either revert to nomadic hunting/gathering or intensify
specialized agriculture in the available areas. The result was full-scale sedentary life.
Epi-Palaeolithic Cultures of the
Zagros Mts.
1. The transition from Neanderthals of the Middle Palaeolithic to modern humans by 30,000 BC is documented in the immensely long occupation of Shanidar Cave in Northeast Iraq.
2.
Shanidar Cave and other open sites of the higher Zagros Mountains where
rainfall was greatest show the transition to the Epi-Palaeolithic in the
Zarzian Culture (ca. 15,000-9,000 B.C.).
3. While, as in the Levant, the inhabitants of
the Zagros gradually exploited a greater variety of plants and fauna, this
activity involved longer distance seasonal travel because of the less
intensively diversified topography (and environment). However by the late Zarzian a pattern consisting of central base
camps with seasonal movement around it had emerged.
4.
Zarzian peoples hunted wild cattle and red deer on wooded hills, wild
sheep on mountains, horse and onager in open valley below, gazelle on lower
distant plains.
5. In the lower dryer areas of the Zagros
rainfall was insufficient to support the quantities of wild animals and plants
founder at higher altitudes. It appears on the basis of the little
archaeological evidence available for this period that only temporary camps
were located in these peripheral areas.
These were badly located to exploit the entire broad spectrum of resource
areas. Thus, according to Lewis
Binford's Theory of Marginal Zone agricultural invention, when people began to
be packed into this area they could not maintain the Broad Spectrum food
exploitation pattern and had to develop new subsistence strategies based on
domesticated plants and animals.
5. Again
we see a move toward more intensive use of wild cereals with the introduction
of micro-blade industries, grinding tools and storage pits (at Shanidar Cave).
Upper and Epi-Palaeolithic Cultures of
Egypt
1. There was very early appearance of specialized
intensive wild cereal exploitation in Upper Egypt (ca. 15,000-12,000 BC,
contemporary with Kebaran of the Levant) at Kom Ombo in the Nile Valley (Philip
Smith) and the Wadi Kubbaniya and Nubia (Fred Wendorf).
2. The climate in the Late Upper Palaeolithic was
probably quite dry after a Mousterian wet period so population concentrated in
the Nile Valley with its abundance of wild resources. There was little exploitation of the Western Sahara.
3. The
Nile Valley at Kom Ombo consists of a large plain with swamps near the river
giving refuge to fowl, large game (hippo, crocodile, elephant), small game
(deer, pig) and fish. There was also
lush vegetation of fruits and nuts and, on the peripheries, rich
grasslands. This lush Nilotic Zone
remained the basis for a traditional life-style for millennia. The Wadi Kubbaniya situation was similar
although in a wide valley entering the Nile Valley proper.
4. These
occupations represent an incipient agricultural phase much like the slightly
later Kabaran Culture of the Levant and Zarzian Culture of the Zagros.
1. After
10,000 BC the climate became wetter, somewhat later than in the Levant,
bringing large lakes and grasslands to the oases and deserts west of the
Nile.
2.
Populations responded by evolving a dual way of life - nomadic
pastoralism in the Western Sahara region and semi-sedentary hunting/gathering
in the Nile Valley:
3. The
groups that moved out onto the western plains developed a nomadic pastoral way
of life based on exploitation of the grasslands and large oases and lakes that
permitting fishing, hunting and cereal exploitation. Most significant the
domestication of cattle created the basis for a nomadic life-way that
characterized North Africa for many centuries.
4. People remaining in the Nile Valley continued
to rely on the very rich hunting/gathering way of life provided by the river
(large game, fish, fowl) and surrounding flood plain (rich vegetation - fruits
nuts, wild vegetables) and peripheral grasslands (cereals).
8.
Consequently Egypt did not adopt agriculture until 7-6000 BC, much later
than the areas farther east. It
developed a particular, different and equally successful response to its
specific ecological challenges that did not involve domestication with the
exception of cattle.