Technological, Typological and Forensic Analysis of the Small Finds from the Early Middle Paleolithic Beds at Tabun Cave, Israel.

Summary

Tabun Cave, Israel, has provided the reference sequence for the Late Lower and Middle Paleolithic in the Levant. Re-excavation by Jelinek (1968-73) recovered a large sample of lithics including over 23,000 small finds. This paper reports the first detailed typological, technological and forensic analysis of the small lithics from beds 60 to 68, the Early Middle Paleolithic (EMP) "D-Type" Levallois Mousterian. These pieces provide clues to lithic reduction sequences, as well as examples of small retouched tools and tool fragments. High and low power microscopy has found evidence of the use of small lithics as expedient cutting tools. The small lithics closely mirror the techno-typological characteristics of the extensively studied larger specimens at Tabun, and it would have been possible to reconstruct the entire sequence of the site based solely on the small finds.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage