Stone tools provide a unique window into the mode of adaptation and cognitive abilities of Lower Paleolithic early humans. The persistently produced large cutting tools (bifaces/handaxes) have long been an appealing focus of research in the reconstruction of Lower Paleolithic survival strategies, at the expenses of the small flake tools considered by-products of the stone production process rather than desired end products. Here, we use use-wear, residues and technological analyses to show direct and very early evidence of the deliberate production and use of small flakes for targeted stages of the prey butchery process at the late Lower Paleolithic Acheulian site of Revadim, Israel. We highlight the significant role of small flakes in Lower Paleolithic adaptation alongside the canonical large handaxes. Our results demonstrate the technological and cognitive flexibility of early human groups in the Levant and beyond at the threshold of the departure from Lower Paleolithic lifeways.
A unique Pottery Neolithic context corresponding to the Wadi Rabah culture was found at the multi-layered site of Ein Zippori, Israel. Given the significant amount of flakes, cortical flakes, thinning flakes, and bifacial tool rejects, it was classified as a refuse pit in which bifacial knapping waste from a nearby workshop was disposed. In this paper we present the assemblage of Locus 8071, focusing on the by-products of bifacial tool manufacture and maintenance as well as bifacial tool rejects. We reconstruct the bifacial knapping and maintenance procedures and suggest that Locus 8071 was a disposal area for by-products from a knapping workshop of bifacial tools—an aspect of spatial organization related to possible specialized lithic production at Ein Zippori during the Neolithic period.
Abstract Evidence from the Levantine Late Lower Paleolithic sites of Jaljulia and Qesem Cave suggests that Quina scrapers, an innovation in a category of tools used mostly for butchery, emerged with changes in hunting practices. Quina scrapers were often made of non-local flint from the Samarian highlands, a home range of fallow deer populations throughout the ages. The predominance of fallow deer in the human diet following the disappearance of megafauna made scrapers key tools in human subsistence. Particular stone tools and particular prey animals, thus, became embedded in an array of practical, cosmological, and ontological conceptions whose origin we trace back to Paleolithic times. The mountains of Samaria, a source of both animals and stone under discussion, were part of this nexus. We present archaeological and ethnographic evidence of the practical and perceptual bonds between Paleolithic humans, animals, stones, and the landscape they shared.
