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29 - Palaeolithic Occupations in Nahal Amud

from Part III: - Archaeology of Human Evolution

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

The 1925 Turvile-Petre Nahal Amud survey was the first systematic prehistoric research in Israel. Zuttieyh and Emireh Caves were identified as prehistoric sites and excavated. Amud and Shovakh Caves were excavated only in the 1960s. The last phase of excavations was in Amud Cave in the 1990s. Out of 90 caves recently surveyed and documented in the lower part of the Nahal Amud Watershed, these are the only ones that bear evidence for Palaeolithic occupations. The time span of hominin settlement in Nahal Amud is late Middle Pleistocene (in Zuttiyeh), through early late Pleistocene (Amud and Shovakh) to the latest Pleistocene (Emireh). Material culture remains, fauna and hominin skeletal remains found in these sites, the chronological methods applied and the speleological survey, create a rich database. The data bear on evolutionary changes in the hominin lineage, the behaviours of Neanderthals, cultural evolution and decision-making and local processes of landscape formation. In this chapter, results of prehistoric studies of Nahal Amud are put in broader regional and global contexts of human cultural and biological evolution in the middle-late Pleistocene.

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