Far'ah II: A Middle Palaeolithic Open-Air Site in the Northern Negev, Israel.

Abstract

The middle palaeolithic open-air site of Far'ah II was discovered and tested by the British Western Negev Expedition during the years 1972–73 (Price Williams 1973; 1975). After the British team concluded its field programme in 1976, the Archaeological Division of Ben Gurion University of the Negev in collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem took over. For three seasons during 1976, 1977, and 1978, the site was excavated under the direction of I. Gilead.A preliminary report of the results of the 1977 season described the basic aspects of the flint technology and typology (Gilead 1980). It is the intention of this article to discuss new data acquired during the field season of 1978 and to present a more detailed analysis of the flint artefacts and animal remains and of their spatial distribution on the archaeological surfaces.

The Middle Paleolithic of the East Mediterranean Levant

“…The Nahal Zin (Central Negev) contains numerous MP sites, of which Rosh Ein Mor (D15) and Nahal Aqev (D35) are the most extensively excavated (Crew, 1976;Marks, 1981;Munday, 1976b). Further west, the site of Far'ah II preserves a rich faunal assemblage as well as refitting sets of lithic artifacts (Gilead and Grigson, 1984).…”

Eat what is there: hunting and gathering in the world of Neanderthals and their neighbours

“…Similarly, one can compare the few Mousterian open-air sites in the Levant to cave assemblages (e.g. Gilead & Grigson, 1984;Davis et al, 1988;. In general, the open-air localities are dominated by large and medium-size mammals, whereas caves usually contain very few large mammals.…”

Late quaternary environmental history of the southern Levant

“…Two areas have been studied within the past decade. These are the Tell Fara area (Price-Williams, 1973Gardner, 1975Gardner, , 1977Gilead, 1980;Gilead and Grigson, 1984) and that of HaMifgash where these two wadis meet; sites in the latter have been surveyed and partially excavated by 0. Bar-Yosef and N. Goring-Morris of the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University (unpublished).…”

“…These sediments, as at Nizzana and Qadesh Barnea, are essentially redeposited loessial sediments laid down by low energy streams (Gardner, 1977;Sneh, 1983); Horowitz and Sneh (1984) suggest that stream flow may have been perennial. Within the lowest 5 m of these fine sediments occurs the site of Fara 11, which contains an industry not unlike that of Boker Tachtit in Nahal Zin (Gilead and Grigson, 1984). The bulk of the overlaying sediments are quite impoverished in prehistoric remains, although sites K and N, which occur in the middle of the section, appear to be "suggestively Upper Paleolithic" (Price-Williams, 1975, p. 138).…”