Fire Use in the Levantine Early Epipaleolithic: The Dibble and Colleagues Lithics Count Method

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Using a count method of complete and proximal burnt lithics ≥2.5 cm, Dibble and colleagues recorded a pattern of fire use by southwestern France Neanderthals whereby fire use was more common in warmer rather than colder intervals of the late Pleistocene. Recent work by Abdolahzadeh and colleagues indicates that this pattern is also found in other areas of Europe. Here, we apply the Dibble and colleagues count method to assess fire use by Early Epipaleolithic modern humans living during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in the western highlands of Jordan. While the Levant is more southerly than Europe, colder/drier conditions pertained during the LGM. Our investigations are aimed at examining if the Dibble and colleagues count method is also applicable to modern human contexts and in areas that would have been less cold overall than Europe. Such assessments have the potential to offer insights into modern human behaviors compared to those of Neanderthals.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part I   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36019.0