Eur asian Pre history, 7 (1): 129–151. THE FIRST TWO EX CA VA TION SEA SONS AT NMO: A MOUSTE RIAN SITE AT THE BANK OF THE JOR DAN RIVER Gonen Sharon1, Leore Grosman1, Hannah Fluck2, Yoel Melamed3, Yoel Rak4, Rivka Rabinovich5 and Maya Oron1 1 In sti tute of Ar chae ol ogy, The He brew Uni ver sity of Je ru sa lem, Mt. Scopus, 91905 Je ru sa lem, Is rael; [email protected] 2 Cen tre for the Ar chae ol ogy of Hu man Ori gins, Uni ver sity of Southampton, Highfield SO17 1BJ, United King dom 3 The Mina and Everard Good man Fac ulty of Life Sci ences, Bar-Ilan Uni ver sity, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel 4 Anat omy and An thropol ogy De partment, Fac ulty of Med i cine, Tel Aviv Uni ver sity, Ramat Aviv, Is rael 5 Na tional Nat u ral His tory Col lec tions, The He brew Uni ver sity of Je ru sa lem, Je ru sa lem, Is rael Ab stract The Mousterian site at the Outlet of Nahal Mahanayeem to the Jordan River (NMO) was discov ered as a result of a drainage op era tion north of Gesher Benot Ya´aqov in the Southern Hula Valley. Survey and surface collec tion brought to light the presence of a rich lithic as semblage ascribed primar ily to the Middle Paleolithic, Mousterian lithic tradi tion. Sig- nifi cant pre-exca va tion finds include a fragment of human skull and the skull and femur of a lion. In this paper, we pres ent the data collected prior to exca va tion and the results of the first two ex cava tion seasons at the NMO Mousterian site. Key words: Mousterian, Gesher Benot Ya´aqov, open-air site, flora, human remains. the east bank of the Jordan River ca. 100 meters IN TRO DUC TION south of the present day ar ti ficial chan nel out let of In the fall of 1999, the Kinneret Drainage Au- Nahal Mahanayeem (the Mahanayeem Stream) thor ity un der took a large drain age op er a tion into the Jordan (Fig. 1; Co ordi nates: 33°001’40’’N/ aimed at deepen ing the chan nel of the Jordan 35°037’50’’E). In the sum mer of 2002, a geo-ar- River between the Pkak Bridge and the Ateret chae o log i cal sur vey of sec tions of the Jor dan Fortress (Fig. 1; and see Sharon et al., 2002 for River bank in the vi cinity of Gesher Benot Ya´a- de tails). A large vol ume of sed iment was re - qov was con ducted. moved, dam ag ing the Early-Mid dle Pleis to cene The pre lim inary study in the vicin ity of what depos its of the Benot Ya’akov Forma tion, as well is now known as the site of Nahal Mahanayeem as the Late Pleis to cene Ashmora For ma tion com- Outlet (NMO) ex posed the great poten tial of the prising the upper portion of the geolog i cal se- site for fur ther in ves ti ga tion. Ac cord ingly, two quence in this section of the river (Horowitz, sea sons of ex ca va tion were car ried out at the site 1979). during the fall of 2007 and 2008. The seasons Dur ing the drain age op er a tion, the pres ence were planned and exe cuted to address the follow - of many stone tools and bones in mint condi tion ing pri mary research ques tions: 1) to estab lish the within the piles of clay dug from the river trench gen eral geo log i cal stra tig ra phy of the Jor dan was noted. The main con centra tion of archae o log- River bank at the site’s vi cin ity; 2), to prove the ical finds was observed in the sed iment piles on ac tual pres ence of in situ ar chae o log i cal ho ri zons 130 G. Sharon et al. Fig. 1. Loca tion of the NMO Site The first two ex ca va tion sea sons at NMO 131 given that the ar chae o log ical finds were all col - lected from the piles of damped sed iments and from the Jordan River banks surface; 3) To ex - plore the na ture of the ar chae o log i cal lay ers and their distri bution; and 4) to as sess the preser va tion condi tion of the lithic, fauna and flora as sem- blages. During these two ex cava tion sea sons, an ar- chae o log i cal ho ri zon was ex posed con tain ing many finds assigned to the Mid dle Paleolithic. An i mal bones in ex cel lent state of pres er va tion were un cov ered and the rich bo tan i cal as sem blage of wood, seeds and fruits estab lished the poten tial of the NMO site for the study of the region’s paleo-en vi ron ment. In ad di tion, a gen eral geo log- i cal stra tig ra phy was es tab lished for the NMO lo - cality as well as smaller a scale stra tig ra phy for the ar chae o log i cal lay ers. The purpose of this pa per is twofold: to re port on the results and sig nifi cant finds from the pre-exca va tion survey of the site and to present Fig. 2. a. The hu man skull frag ment from NMO; b. Fos sil ized bone frag ment su per im posed on a mod ern pre lim i nary re sults from the two first ex ca va tion calva- rium to show the fragment’s ana tomi cal loca tion sea sons at NMO. The study of the NMO site is in its pri mary stages, yet we have suf fi cient in for ma - tion to present the finds from the site as seen to- day keeping in mind that, as with any archae o log- nal bone tables. Cleaning confirmed our orig inal ical site, some of the views and sug gestions im pression that the bone is that of a hominid presented here may look very differ ent in light of calvarium. The fragment con sists mainly of the the re sults of fu ture re search. left pa ri etal and bears the an terior sec tion of the sagittal su ture and the eroded lat eral (left) part of the co ronal su ture. Adja cent to the sagittal suture lie the re mains of the medial part of the right pa ri - SUR VEY RE SULTS AND etal bone. The break along the bro ken lateral edge PRE-EX CA VA TION FINDS of the right pari etal is fresh. The edge of the rest The human skull fragment of the frag ment is coated with the brec cia-like in - The large piles of sedi ments dumped onto the crus ta tion. banks of the Jordan River during the 1999 drain - Align ing the re mains of the sagittal su ture age work were left untouched until their removal with the midline re veals the ex act an a tomi cal lo - in 2003. While remov ing a pile from the west cation of the fragment: it extends from just be hind bank of the Jordan im medi ately south of the bregma (which is not preserved) to a point Nahal Mahanayeem out let (Fig. 1), Is rael An tiq - slightly ante rior to obelion (Fig. 2b). The antero- uity Au thor ity in spec tor O. Barzilai collected poste rior length of the fragment is about 75 mm, large quanti ties of bones and stone tools. Among and its bi lat eral width is about 62 mm. Its thick - the bones, a frag ment of hu man skull was identi - ness at the remain ing ante rior end of the sagittal fied (Fig. 2a). These sed iments proba bly origi - suture is 5 mm; poste ri orly, the bone thickens nated from the west river bank, from an unknown slightly, reaching 7 mm at the poste rior end of the depth. sur viv ing sagittal su ture. The fos sil bone fragment is part of a brain- The frag ment weighs 30 grams and is 34% case. A hard, reddish brown, breccia-like incrus - heavier than a dry fragment em anat ing from the tation covered the fragment’s inter nal and exter - dissec tion room and com para ble in size, thick- 132 G. Sharon et al. The lithic ar tifacts as so ci ated with the human skull A se lec tion of tools col lected from the same pile of sedi ments from which the fragment of hu - man skull was found is shown in Fig. 4. This col - lec tion con tains at least two lithic com po nents. The first group (Fig. 4: 2–4) is of Levallois Mous- terian or igin and in cludes several tool types made on Levallois flakes and blades. The second com - po nent is possi bly Up per Paleolithic (UP) or even Early Epi-Paleolithic (Fig. 4: 1, 5–8). The UP tools include vari ous types of end-scrap ers made mainly on blade blanks, burin on trunca tion and re touched blades.