Levallois technology half a million years ago? A view from late Acheulian Jaljulia, Israel. - Archive ouverte HAL
Poster De Conférence Année : 2022

Levallois technology half a million years ago? A view from late Acheulian Jaljulia, Israel.

Résumé

Particular technical behaviours, usually associated with the Middle Palaeolithic, were identified in late Acheulean sites in the Levant. However, these “hierarchical systems” or “prepared cores”, considered as Levallois or associated technologies, are usually present in low proportions within these assemblages. The discovery of late Lower Palaeolithic Jaljulia offers an unprecedented opportunity to perform a detailed analysis of the hierarchised productions, by providing significant numbers of associated cores and products. Jaljulia was excavated in 2016-17 and yielded six archaeological localities, all attributed to the late Lower Palaeolithic and dated between 500-300/200 ka [1]. Recently, an account on prepared core technologies from area B (ca. 340ka) was published [2]. In this presentation we focus on the earliest locality at the site, area D, dated to ca. 513 ka by TT-OSL and ESR, thus pushing the evidence some 150 ka earlier. The lithic assemblage is made of flint and composed mainly by debitage reduction processes, alongside numerous bifaces. We performed a technological analysis of all debitage chaînes opératoires of the locality, including attributes analysis coupled by morphometric data and diacritic diagrams. Within the core reduction concepts identified at area D (Discoid, Algorithmic, Cores-on-Flakes), Levallois-like productions are not anecdotal, representing a significant proportion of the production methods. We highlighted two different core management processes: a typo-Levallois and a more classic Levallois. The first does not fulfil all the criteria defined by Boëda [3] while the second one does [3]. Both modes can be considered within a same volumetric concept. Exploitations are mostly recurrent unipolar and bipolar, including sometimes a search for laminar products. A specific selection of fine-grained flints for these productions is of note, originating from the immediate vicinity of the site [4]. This selection of good quality pebbles/cobbles with specific morphologies allowed the knappers to perform less gestures in order to set up and manage core convexities and striking platforms. It can be considered as a technical shortcut within the knapping processes, which sometimes resulted in relatively low productivity in comparison to Middle Paleolithic Levallois technologies. We argue thus that a Levallois technology variant is present in Jaljulia already half a million years ago, which is different to those identified during the Early Middle Palaeolithic. Levallois technologies recognised during the Late Acheulean in the Levant are however seemingly absent from later Acheuleo-Yabroudian sites, dated to 420-200 ka. Fully fledged Levallois technologies re-appear once again in the Near-East around 200 ka during the Early Middle Palaeolithic, suggested by some to be a manifestation of specific human dispersals. The site of Jaljulia offers the opportunity to follow the trajectory of an Acheulean invention, its genesis and becoming. The results allow us to consider assimilation and transmission of the Levallois concept in the Paleolithic Levant and discuss the fluctuations of its implication during significant phases of human biological and cultural evolution in the Near East. This research is supported by the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel-Aviv University, the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 321/19) and by the Israel Antiquities Authority (project no. 108149). References: [1] Shemer, M., Greenbaum, N., Taha, N., Brailovsky-Rokser, L., Ebert, Y., Shaar, R., Falgueres, C., Voinchet, P., Porat, N., Faershtein, G., Horwitz, L.K., 2022. Late Acheulian Jaljulia–Early human occupations in the paleo-landscape of the central coastal plain of Israel. PloS One, 17(5), e0267672.[2] Rosenberg-Yefet, T., Shemer, M., Barkai, R., 2022. Lower Paleolithic Winds of Change: Prepared Core Technologies and the Onset of the Levallois Method in the Levantine Late Acheulian. Frontiers in Earth Science 10:847358. [3] Boëda, E., 1994. Le débitage Levallois: variabilité des méthodes. Monographie du CRA, 9, CNRS Editions, 296 [4] Agam, A., Rosenberg-Yefet, T., Wilson, L., Shemer, M., Barkai, R., 2022. Flint Type Analysis at Late Acheulian Jaljulia (Israel), and Implications for the Origins of Prepared Core Technologies. Frontiers in Earth Science 10, 858032.
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hal-03789983 , version 1 (27-09-2022)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03789983 , version 1

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Cyrielle Mathias, Maayan Shemer, Ran Barkai. Levallois technology half a million years ago? A view from late Acheulian Jaljulia, Israel.. European Society for the study of Human Evolution Meeting, Sep 2022, Tübingen, Germany. ⟨hal-03789983⟩
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