i Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Humanities The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures Flint Procurement and Exploitation Strategies in the Late Lower Paleolithic Levant: the case of Acheulo-Yabrudian Qesem Cave Volume I: Main Text Thesis submitted for the degree "Doctor of Philosophy" by Aviad Agam Under the supervision of Prof. Ran Barkai, Prof. Avi Gopher and Prof. Lucy Wilson Submitted to the Senate of Tel-Aviv University June 2019 ii iii Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Ran Barkai, Professor Avi Gopher and Professor Lucy Wilson, for their endless support, advice and guidance, and for their constant willingness to help and encourage. It was a great pleasure and honour to work with you and learn from you. To my friends at the lab, Ella Assaf, Miki Ben-Dor, Chicho Cohen, Bar Efrati, Meir Finkel, Yafit Kedar, Yoni Parush, Tamar Rosenberg-Yefet, Natasha Solodenko, Flavia Venditti, Andrea Zupancich and Katia Zutovski, for the encouragement, for their friendship, and for all our conversations, about archaeology and prehistory, of course, but also about politics, food, music, "Game of Thrones", movies, food, "Married at First Sight", and, of course, food. I could not have asked for better lab partners. To Professor Chaim Benjamini, for greatly improving my understanding of the petrographic results, and for his patience and willingness to help. To Ofir Tirosh, Meir Finkel, Omri Yagel and Erez Ben-Yosef, for their help with the geochemical analysis. To Andrea Zupancich and Professor Cristina Lemorini, for their vital help in the Quina Scrapers analysis, and for showing me Rome. It was wonderful! To Pasha Shrago and Sasha Flit, for the pictures in this thesis. To Rodica Penchas, for the drawing in Figure 102. To Itamar Ben-Ezra, for the maps in this thesis. To Boaz Hameiri, for his help with the statistical analysis, and for his friendship and support. To my children, Omer and Rotem - thank you for being the amazing wonder that you are. Thank you for the ocassional much needed breaks. You are an inseparable part of this work. Lastly, to Sarit, the love of my life, for the endless support, patience, advice and understanding. I cannot believe how lucky I am to have you. This could not have happened without you. iv v Table of contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1. Introduction 1 1.1. The Archaeological Contexts 2 1.2. The Acheulian Cultural Complex 3 1.2.1. Handaxes 5 1.2.2. Revadim 6 1.2.3. Jaljulia 8 1.3. The Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex 9 1.3.1. Amudian Laminar Production 12 1.3.2. The Quina Technique 13 1.3.3. Handaxes in the Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex 14 1.4. Qesem Cave 15 1.4.1. The Faunal Remains at Qesem Cave 17 1.4.2. The Lithic Industries of Qesem Cave 18 1.4.2.1. The Blades of Qesem Cave 18 1.4.2.2. The Handaxes of Qesem Cave 19 1.4.2.3. Quina and demi-Quina Scrapers at Qesem Cave 20 1.4.3. The Human Remains 21 1.4.4. Previous Studies of Lithic Procurement and Exploitation at Qesem Cave 21 1.5. Geological Background 22 1.5.1. What is Flint? 22 1.5.2. The Formation of Flint 23 1.5.3. The Composition of Flint 24 vi 1.5.4. The Mechanical Traits of Flint 24 1.5.5. The Visual Traits of Flint 25 1.5.6. The Geo‐settings of the Qesem CaveThe Geology of the Region 26 1.5.7. Flint-Bearing Outcrops Around QC 27 1.6. Archaeological Raw Material Studies 30 1.6.1. The Reliability of Macroscopic Flint Ttype Classifications 30 1.6.2. Lithic Procurement and Exploitation Strategies in the Archaeological Record of the 31 Levant 1.7. Lithic Procurement and Exploitation Strategies in the Ethnographic Record 37 1.8. Lithic Direct Procurement versus Embedded Procurement 41 1.9. Research Goals 46 Chapter 2: Materials and Methods 2. Materials 48 2.1. The Selected Assemblages 48 2.2. The Quina and demi-Quina Scrapers Sample 58 2.3. The Bifaces Assemblage 60 2.4. The Samples from the Late Acheulian Sites of Revadim and Jaljulia 62 3. Methods 64 3.1. Macroscopic Classification 64 3.1.1. Criteria for Macroscopic Classification 66 3.1.2. Analysis of the Quina and demi-Quina Scrapers 69 3.1.3. Analysis of the Bifaces 70 3.2. Geologic Flint Sources Survey 70 vii 3.3. Petrographic Thin Section Analysis 72 3.4. Geochemical Analysis 75 Chapter 3: The Blind Test Evaluation 4. Blind Test Evaluation of Consistency in Macroscopic Lithic Raw Material Sorting 79 4.1. The Rationale Behind the Blind Test 79 4.2. The Blind Test – Materials and Methods 81 4.2.1. The Participants 81 4.2.2. The Tutorial Process 82 4.2.3. The Test 82 4.2.4. Data Analysis 84 4.3. Blind Test Results 85 4.3.1. Results by Flint Types 85 4.3.2. Results by Groups of Flint Types 88 4.3.3. Selected Case Studies 90 4.3.3.1. Type AF 90 4.3.3.2. Type AQ 92 4.3.3.3. Test Piece 17 93 4.3.3.4. Test Piece 3 94 4.3.3.5. Groups with a Low Median Number of Matches 94 4.4. The Significance of the Blind Test 95 4.5. Conclusions and Implication of the Blind Test 98 viii Chapter 4: Data Analysis 5. Results 101 5.1. The Potential Flint Sources 101 5.2. The QC Flint Types and Groups of Flint Types 116 5.2.1. The QC Flint Types 117 5.2.2. The Groups of Flint Types 124 5.3. Petrographic Data 126 5.3.1. A Review of the Major Components 127 5.3.1.1. The Micro-Fossils 127 5.3.1.2. The Main Minerals and Textures 138 5.3.2. Petrographic Analysis Results 142 5.3.2.1. The Geologic Sources 142 5.3.2.2. The Archaeological Samples 154 5.3.3. Summary of the Petrography Results 161 5.4. Geochemical Analysis 161 5.4.1. Relations Between Elements 166 5.4.2. Geochemical Analysis Results 168 5.4.3. Discussion of the Geochemistry Results 173 5.5. The Assignment of the QC Flint Types to Potential Geologic Origins 174 5.6. Data Analysis 176 5.6.1. Results - The General Sample 177 5.6.1.1. Diachronic Patterns of Flint Exploitation at QC 189 5.6.1.2. Results by Industries 194 5.6.1.3. Patterns of Exploitation in Specific Assemblages from Selected Contexts 197 5.6.1.3.1. The Hearth, South of Hearth, and the South-Western Yabrudian assemblages 197 ix 5.6.1.3.2. The Top Level Amudian, Top Level Yabrudian and Deep Shelf – Unit I 201 Assemblages 5.6.1.3.3. The Deep Shelf – Unit I, Amudian (Shelf), Amudian Below the Shelf, and the 207 Yabrudian Below the Shelf Assemblages 5.6.2. Blades, Scrapers and Bifaces Analysis 213 5.6.2.1. Blades Analysis 213 5.6.2.1.1. The Blades Analysis – Results 214 5.6.2.1.2. Laminar Items Analysis by Assemblages 220 5.6.2.1.3. Discussion of the Laminar Items Results 223 5.6.2.2. The Quina and demi-Quina Scrapers Analysis 226 5.6.2.2.1. Quina and demi-Quina scrapers – General Results 226 5.6.2.2.2. Analysis of the Quina and demi-Quina scrapers from two Yabrudian 233 Assemblages 5.6.2.2.3. The Significance of the Quina and demi-Quina Results 236 5.6.2.3. Bifaces Analysis 238 5.6.2.3.1. The Bifaces – Results 239 5.6.2.3.1.1. The Roughouts 245 5.6.2.3.1.2. The Handaxes 246 5.6.2.3.1.3. The Bifacial Spall 249 5.6.2.3.1.4. The Trihedral Pick 250 5.6.2.3.2. A Comparison to the Jaljulia Handaxes 251 5.6.2.3.3. The Role of Handaxes in Lower Paleolithic Lifeways 253 5.6.2.3.4. Explaining the Presence of Bifaces at QC 255 5.7. The Jaljulia and Revadim Analysis 258 5.7.1. The Jaljulia Sample Analysis 259 x 5.7.2. The Revadim sample Analysis 265 5.7.3. Discussion of the Jaljulia and Revadim Results 271 Chapter 5: Discussion and Conclusions 6. Discussion 273 6.1. An Overview of the Results 273 6.2. The Significance of the Results 275 6.3. Considerations Affecting Flint Procurement 279 7. Conclusions 285 8. Bibliography 287 xi List of Tables Chapter 2: Materials and Methods Table 1: The assemblages analyzed, the sample size (number of items), sediment volume, and artifact density. Table 2: A breakdown of the analyzed assemblages by technological categories. Table 3: The scrapers analyzed: scraper type, assemblage and the industry associated with the assemblage. Table 4: The bifaces assemblage of Qesem Cave, with their stratigraphic origin, the assemblage to which they are assigned, and their sub-category. Table 5: The breakdown of the analyzed samples from Revadim and Jaljulia. Table 6: The geologic samples for the geochemical analysis. Table 7: The archaeological samples for the geochemical analysis. Chapter 3: The Blind Test Evaluation Table 8: Number of matches by participant, individual types, and group of flint types. Table 9: Blind test results by groups of participants. Table 10: Blind test results by group of flint types, and percentage of success in identification for each group of participants.