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63 - The Lower Palaeolithic of 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

While there are many parallels in typology and technology on both the eastern and western sides of the Jordan rift valley during the Lower Palaeolithic period, there are also geographically related characteristics that indicate more than just differences in available resources that stone tools were used to exploit them. This is particularly the case for the Late Acheulian of the Jordanian highlands and eastern plateau, when Levallois techniques featured heavily in production of flakes tools, and when bifacial cleavers strongly dominated the bifaces used in butchering game. Acheulian camps in Jordan are mainly open-air sites associated with ambush hunting in areas of predictable megafauna concentrations along migration routes or permanent sources of water. The distribution of Lower Palaeolithic sites in Jordan suggests that there was an eastern arm of the Levantine corridor of the migration of hominins through the southern Levant.
Type
Chapter
Information
Quaternary of the Levant
Environments, Climate Change, and Humans
, pp. 577 - 584
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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