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75 - Late Quaternary Refugia, Aggregations, and Palaeoenvironments in the Azraq Basin, Jordan

from Part VI: - Humans in the Levant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Yehouda Enzel
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

In addition to other sites, the Azraq basin hosts two of the largest Early Epipalaeolithic sites in southwest Asia that provide evidence for substantial aggregations of human groups linked into wide regional networks of interaction and exchange. These intensive occupations were supported by extensive wetlands, lakes and a well-vegetated environment that buffered populations here against adverse climatic oscillations during the LGM. This environmental buffer provided a stable late glacial refugium for human groups throughout the Epipalaeolithic, with local variations over these 10,000 years, as evidenced by an uninterrupted settlement sequence. Whereas other regions of southwest Asia appear to have been more directly affected by various climatic and environmental changes, the Azraq basin appears to have been a much more stable and less marginal environment for human groups during the turbulent climate of the late Quaternary. Aggregation sites like Kharaneh IV may have served as nodes of interaction in the landscape; where groups from the region congregated, leaving evidence for repeated and prolonged occupation and a rich record of hunter-gatherer lifeways.
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Quaternary of the Levant
Environments, Climate Change, and Humans
, pp. 679 - 690
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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