Microliths and Mortuary Practices: late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers and landscapes in the Azraq Basin, Jordan.

Lead Research Organisation: University of Cambridge
Department Name: Biological Anthropology

Abstract

Studies of the Epipalaeolithic often regard the arid areas of the Levant as marginal, while considering the Mediterranean zone as the centre of cultural developments in the late EP. While EP site distributions have brought this view into question (e.g., Garrard et al. 1988 and forthcoming), recent research by Dr. Stock and Dr. Maher demonstrates that early and middle EP sites in Jordan assumed to have been occupied by mobile hunter-gatherers strongly resemble later sites of sedentary, socially-complex groups (Natufians). More than seven human burials from `Uyun al-Hammam (Maher 2005) doubles the number of human skeletons from this time period and provides data on health, diet, behaviour, and biological affinities. Our work presents critical insights into the timing and nature of the first sedentary villages, early animal domestication, the role of animals in social life, prehistoric health, mortuary practices, and the first cemeteries. It also raises questions as to whether the characteristics of `Uyun al-Hammam are unique, or indicative of broad trends in EP behaviour. The proposed research aims to test these questions through a combined programme of excavation, at the sites of Kharaneh IV and Ayn Qasiyah, and analysis of archaeological evidence for behavioural change in the Epipalaeolithic. Preliminary work demonstrates the excellent potential of these sites for addressing the questions raised by our previous research, both from their rich archaeological and environmental records, and the presence of human burials.

Both of these sites fall within the Azraq Basin, a former wetland that provided abundant resources and was an attractive location for human settlement throughout the EP. Test excavations at Kharaneh IV (Muheisen, 1988) revealed a long sequence of human settlement, from the early to the middle EP (c. 20,000-15,000 cal B.P.), with evidence for hut structures, hearths, and some of the earliest known human burials in Jordan. Kharaneh IV provides evidence for a prolonged history of human settlement in the region, and the burial of individuals on-site may represent a process of 'marking out' special places in the landscape. Ayn Qasiyah exhibits both early EP (c. 21,000-17,000 cal B.P.) and late EP (c. 14,500-10,200 cal B.P.) occupations and the semi-articulated remains of an adult skeleton in the early EP horizons. Work at the site, which has excellent organic preservation of the marsh deposits, will enable us to excavate the burial and gain a more detailed understanding of behavioural patterns reflected by spatial organization, site use, and changing conditions within the marshland.

The presence of human burials at these sites, in the context of recent discoveries, presents the first opportunity to study the health, diet, and mortuary practices of this period, and to integrate this data with the osteological analysis of Natufian burials (Stock et al., 2005). These data, in turn, are integral to address the larger-scale issues regarding habitual behaviour and the origins of sedentism, socio-economic shifts to plant intensification, dietary changes associated with behavioural change, and the elaboration of burial practices. Our project goals hinge on the complimentary types of data brought together by the explicit collaboration of the three applicants and related specialists.

Our research will critically re-evaluate the 'origins of agriculture' paradigm through the excavation of two sites, strategically chosen for their spatial and temporal context, and re-evaluation of existing evidence. This project will place this transition within a broader theoretical framework that includes human biology, environmental change, landscape use, niche construction, and social agency. This integrated approach highlights humans' knowledgeable engagement with a physical and social environment, expressed through the material record, and will test whether the behaviourial roots of agriculture are found prior to the Natufian.
 
Description The transition between hunting and gathering subsistence and farming in the Levant is amongst the earliest and best documented occurrences of the 'agricultural revolution' worldwide. This Neolithic transition is often viewed as the beginning of a series of significant changes in human social organization, on the basis of the rise of food production and the storage of food surpluses, which led to property ownership, social hierarchy, task specialization and runaway technological evolution. This perspective views the Neolithic as the period where humans became the agents of environmental change who modified the natural world to suit human needs. The late Epipalaeolithic 'Natufian' (ca. 14,500-11,600 cal BP) period in this region is seen as reflecting a cultural precursor of the Neolithic, due to the extensive exploitation of wild grains and the use of groundstone, stone architecture and a variety of organized site structures, art and evidence for symbolic behaviour.

Over the past four years, the Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project has provided crucial new evidence that has helped to change the way we view the cultural developments preceding the origins of agriculture. To investigate the social and environmental precursors to later sedentism and farming, we excavated two archaeological sites (Kharaneh IV and Ayn Qasiyya) which provide a record of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic people living in the Azraq Basin of Eastern Jordan during the 10,000 years preceding the Natufian. Our research suggests that many of the cultural features of the later Natufian and Neolithic societies developed gradually over a long period of time (ca 22,000-14,500 BP) in the Late Pleistocene. During this period we see evidence for very early systematic exploitation of grain and other plant species, specialised technologies (nets, cordage, wood construction), mobile art and ornamentation, and the refinement of older technologies (such as focused microlith production). At Kharaneh IV, the discovery of 19,000 year old and reapeatedly used hut-structures provided very early evidence for the longer-term use of a single site while the density of tools discovered demonstrates the aggregation of many people at the same site and longer term (potentially semi-sedentary) use of a single site, the precursor to later farming villages. Evidence for marine shells from the Red and Mediterranean Seas at Kharaneh IV provides evidence of considerable trade/exchange networks spanning the western Mediterranean region. We also discovered evidence for early social customs of human burial at Ayn Qasiyya, which demonstrate long-term complexity of burial traditions which extend over 10,000 years from the early Epipalaeolithic through the Natufian and Neolithic. The analysis of human remains suggests that there was biological continuity of populations across this period, in addition to long term cultural continuity and development.

Our research suggests that the origins of agriculture are was part of a long-term culturally-dynamic process which involved intensified plant use, technological change, population aggregation and sedentism, and complex social behaviour and belief, beginning approximately 20,000 years ago. The research suggests that many aspects of the significant change from foraging to farming was not directly linked to the stabilization of the earth's climate with the onset of the Holocene 10,000 years ago, but that it is rooted in cultural changes which were underway millennia earlier.
Exploitation Route The research conducted by the Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project has broad relevance to our understanding of the origins of the modern world. The transition to food production represents, arguably, the most fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the natural environment in the human past. Agricultural surpluses fuelled the greatest demographic expansion and technological development in the history of our species. The knowledge of how and when agriculture developed in particular areas has great relevance to modern-day economic and social issues related to environmental sustainability and food production.

Climate change, on both the global and local scales, is now an ever-present issue familiar to the general public. Indeed, survey of most scientific and popular journals and newspapers reveals climate change to be front-page news and, arguably, one of the largest global crises. Both academic and non-academic avenues of research and industry development are dedicated to discovering ways in which the environment can be preserved while also supporting the world's growing populations and growing economic demands. Sustainability is not simply a political buzzword, but a necessity for everyday life. Land must be more productive in terms of plant and animal yields amidst a climate of warming and desertification.

In the Middle East crises revolving around water availability, diminishing crop yields, deforestation and desertification are particularly poignant because of their often severe social and economic ramifications. However, dealing with dramatic climate change is nothing new to the human species. During the period in which farming developed in the Middle East, some 8000 to 12,000 years ago, the entire globe experienced a sudden change in climate accompanied by very cool and dry conditions called the Younger Dryas. In the Middle East freshwater springs and lakes dried up and the desert expanded to encompass much of the region. Our work investigates how the world's earliest farmers learned to not only cope with this changing climate, but to flourish through the technological development and social organization, and produce surplus enough for populations to expand. The problems of today's society are of a different magnitude, but they centre on the same fundamental issue, that of the sustainability of agricultural production and exchange networks (Stock, 2008). Just as food production and security underpinned the cultural developments of humans in the past, it will also determine the future of human societies.
Sectors Environment
URL http://www.pave.bioanth.cam.ac.uk/efap.html
 
Description A component of this project involved the construction of a protective mud-brick wall around the important archaeological site of Kharaneh IV. This was completed, and interpretive information is now provided at the heritage site of Qasr Kharanneh, nearby. This outcome has helped with both local and international education of the prehistoric heritage of the Azraq Basin. Follow up research on the Palaeolithic burial of Ayn Qaysiyah has now been completed, and the work will be on display in the National Museum in Amman.
First Year Of Impact 2009
Sector Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural