Persistent and ephemeral places in the Early Epipaleolithic in the Wadi al-Hasa region of the western highlands of Jordan

Abstract

Early Epipaleolithic groups in the Levant often are described as highly mobile. Although there are some exceptions (e.g., Kharaneh IV and Ohalo II), most sites are aerially small and said to represent short-term camps. In this paper, we use information from the Early Epipaleolithic occupations at KPS-75, Yutil al-Hasa, Tor Sageer, and Tor at-Tareeq in the Wadi al-Hasa region of Jordan to examine their nature as persistent places in the landscape, which yield cumulative palimpsests that often time-average the activities and events that occurred at these locales. We argue that aerially small sites do not necessarily constitute short-term occupations because sites that might indicate high mobility as part of the spatial palimpsest of the landscape would have been quite ephemeral and often are not recorded by traditional surveys which focus on identifying highly visible sites rather than on systematically recording nonsite locales.

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

“…The close similarities observed in the proportions of different tool types, including quite specific scraper and microlith types, through the different phases excavated in Area A underscore the existence of strong continuities in the nature, diversity and technologies of tool use. As Olszewski and al-Nahar [159] have argued elsewhere, such patterns are often characteristic of 'persistent places'-sites containing the cumulative palimpsests of long-term repeated and highly similar uses of particular locales in the landscape. Their assemblages, representing time-averaged behavioural signals accumulated over successive human generations and at millennial timescales, are thus strongly suggestive of enduring connections to the landscape and repetitive practices recursively constructing community identity and coherence.…”

“…The presence of complete reduction sequences for most of the knapping strategies also points to prolonged occupation periods at PG ranging from several weeks to months. The complex taphonomic and post-depositional histories of the sampled stratigraphy have almost certainly contributed to the creation of time-averaged 'palimpsest assemblages' [159] comprising the commingled remains of short-lived task-specific activities that took place in different parts of the cave chamber during the millennia of its Epipalaeolithic occupation. However, the diversity of the tool repertoires found across all Area A phases and in Area B, and the spatial variation observed in the distribution of tool types, also point to a prevailing pattern of generalised habitation.…”

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

“…The identification of prehistoric Bplaces^within a palaeolandscape is admittedly a challenging endeavor, and several Palaeolithic researchers have suggests the best way to do this is to look for persistent places (Littleton and Allen 2007;Olszewski and al-Nahar 2016;Schlanger 1992;Shaw et al 2016), or what Conkey et al (2003) refer to as places of many generations. These are sites that document repeated reuse and revisitation over long (inter-generational) periods of time.…”

Settled? Recent debates in the archaeology of the Epipalaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Southwest Asia

“…It should be further noted that so-called Bbase camps^were/are designated as such largely due to the presence of stone architecture (amongst other things), a material signature that gives the impression of permanence of occupation (Boyd 2006). However, recent re-evaluations of Bephemeral^locales or places in pre-Natufian contexts in Jordan, such as Wadi al-Hasa, (Olszewski and al-Nahar 2016), and Ohalo II on the south-west shore of the Sea of Galilee (Weiss et al 2008) have emphasized that seemingly Btemporary^sites can have long, persistent and repeated occupation without necessarily becoming embellished by the repeated building of stone architecture. As I have argued elsewhere, Natufian sites with stone architecture also tend to contain numerous human burials (e.g., el-Wad, Nahal Oren, Mallaha, Hayonim, Raqefet), and those without stone architecture rarely, if ever, were used as burial places (Boyd 2006).…”