Epipalaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic burials from the north Lebanese highlands in their regional context

Abstract

Archaeological human remains and their funerary contexts provide valuable insights into social and ideological lives as well as the origins, health and activities of past communities. In the southern Levant extensive cemeteries from the Late Epipalaeolithic (Natufian) and Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) have been recognized, although burials from earlier periods are sparse. Elsewhere in the Levant the record from the whole Epipalaeolithic is poor. Excavations at two adjacent caves at Moghr el-Ahwal in the Qadisha Valley of northern Lebanon have provided a window into human lives and mortuary practices from an otherwise poorly known region. This includes material from contexts with radiocarbon dates ranging from the late Kebaran, Geometric Kebaran and Natufian (c. 19-13.8 ka cal BP) as well as directly dated skeletal material from the mid to late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (c. 9.9-9.5 ka cal BP). Although this forested mountain area may have been isolated from other regions in the Levant, the burial practices show links to the wider area.

The Zagros Epipalaeolithic revisited: New excavations and 14C dates from Palegawra cave in Iraqi Kurdistan

“…It is possible that the distinctive topography and micro ecologies of the piedmont zone, consisting of limestone ridges separated by narrow valleys hosting resource-rich if spatially restricted mosaics of open woodland, grassland and riparian habitats, were not conducive to the creation of large multi-seasonal aggregation locales such as Kharaneh IV and Jilat 6 in the expansive wetlands of the Azraq basin [160,161] or year-round occupied settlements with structures such as Ohalo II on the shore of the Sea of Galilee [162]. Furthermore, although long-distance exchange networks and the use of personal ornaments and ochre are attested at PG, at the same time there is no evidence for other types of social behaviours found in some Levantine sites of this period including, for example, burials [163,164]. The differences observed in the nature, diversity and scales of settlement patterns and material culture practices become even more pronounced once the chronologically later Zarzian phases known from PG and claimed at other sites, are compared to the Levantine late Epipalaeolithic (Natufian) entities.…”

Challenges and prospects for building radiocarbon chronologies of the earlier Holocene of the Levant

“…As collagen is based on long carbon chains that cannot exchange atoms with their surroundings under normal conditions without breaking, any unaltered collagen extracted from an archaeological bone will provide a good 14 C dating sample (Dobberstein et al 2009;Longin 1971). However, collagen preservation conditions are poor throughout the Levant (Weiner and Bar-Yosef 1990) extraction of this preferred sample fraction is often impossible, although some of the more recent attempts proved to be successful (Barzilai et al 2017;Garrard et al 2018;Salamon et al 2010). Nevertheless, where success rates are reported, it is clear that collagen extraction is far from routine.…”