Persistent Place-Making in Prehistory: the Creation, Maintenance, and Transformation of an Epipalaeolithic Landscape

Most archaeological projects today integrate, at least to some degree, how past people engaged with their surroundings, including both how they strategized resource use, organized technological production, or scheduled movements within a physical environment, as well as how they constructed cosmologies around or created symbolic connections to places in the landscape. However, there are a multitude of ways in which archaeologists approach the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human-landscape interrelationships. This paper explores some of these approaches for reconstructing the Epipalaeolithic (ca. 23,000–11,500 years BP) landscape of Southwest Asia, using macro- and microscale geoarchaeological approaches to examine how everyday practices leave traces of human-landscape interactions in northern and eastern Jordan. The case studies presented here demonstrate that these Epipalaeolithic groups engaged in complex and far-reaching social landscapes. Examination of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic (EP) highlights that the notion of “Neolithization” is somewhat misleading as many of the features we use to define this transition were already well-established patterns of behavior by the Neolithic. Instead, these features and practices were enacted within a hunter-gatherer world and worldview

New data on the Geology and Geochronology of the Lower Palaeolithic Site Bizat Ruhama in the Southern Levant

The Bizat Ruhama site in the Northern Negev, Israel, has been first excavated in 1996. But geological observation of this site section began in 1995. The results obtained by geological and geophysical methods are discussed in this paper. New paleoma- gnetic data permit to date the cultural layer at Bizat Ruhama at the Matuyama epoch (0,85-0,99 My). Artifacts that belong to the Matuyama epoch differ from the others by their small sizes.Le site de Bizat Ruhama au Nord du Negev, Israel, a été fouillé pour la première fois en 1996, des observations géologiques ayant commencé en 1995. Les résultats obtenus par ces observations et par des méthodes géophysiques sont discutés ici. De nouvelles données paléomagnétiques permettent de dater la couche anthropique mise au jour à Bizat Ruhama de la période Matuyama (0,85-0,99 millions d'années). Les pièces archéologiques trouvées dans les couches répondant à la période Matuyama diffèrent par leurs très petites dimensions des artefacts trouvés dans les autres couches.Laukhin Stanislav A., Ronen A., Pospelova Genrietta Antoninovna, Sharonova Zinaida V., Ranov Vadim Aleksandrovich, Burdukiewicz Jan Michal, Volgina Valerya A., Tsatskin Alexander. New data on the Geology and Geochronology of the Lower Palaeolithic Site Bizat Ruhama in the Southern Levant. In: Paléorient, 2001, vol. 27, n°1. pp. 69-80