More from the Ohalo II site, Israel.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

All

Further to the paper mentioned earlier in the Bookyard
(CLICK HERE, for the abstract), here is additional information (also an abstract) obtained from the amazingly well–preserved Ohalo II site, in Israel. I am looking forward to reading the article.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

Nadel, Dani, Ehud Weiss, Orit Simchon, Alexander Tsatskin, Avinoam Danin, and Mordechai Kislev. 2004. Stone Age hut in Israel yields world's oldest evidence of bedding. Published online before print April 16, 2004. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0308557101 - Anthropology

Edited by Kent V. Flannery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, and approved March 3, 2004 (received for review January 5, 2004)

The earliest archaeological remains of dwelling huts built by Homo sapiens were found in various European Upper Paleolithic open-air camps. Although floors of huts were found in a small number of cases, modern organization of the home space that includes defined resting areas and bedding remains was not discovered. We report here the earliest in situ bedding exposed on a brush hut floor. It has recently been found at the previously submerged, excellently preserved 23,000-year-old fisher-hunter-gatherers' camp of Ohalo II, situated in Israel on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The grass bedding consists of bunches of partially charred Puccinellia confer convoluta stems and leaves, covered by a thin compact layer of clay. It is arranged in a repeated pattern, on the floor, around a central hearth. This study describes the bedding in its original context on a well preserved intentionally constructed floor. It also reconstructs on the basis of direct evidence (combined with ethnographic analogies) the Upper Paleolithic hut as a house with three major components: a hearth, specific working locales, and a comfortable sleeping area near the walls.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

All,

More information on the Ohelo II site/context/finds/chronology, can also be found in the following papers:

Nadel, D. 2003. THE OHALO II BRUSH HUTS AND THE DWELLING STRUCTURES
OF THE NATUFIAN AND PPNA SITES IN THE JORDAN VALLEY. Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 1 (13): 34-48.

Nadel, D., S. Belitzky, E. Boaretto, I Carmi, J, Heinemeier, E. Werker, and S. Marco. 2001. NEW DATES FROM SUBMERGED LATE PLEISTOCENE SEDIMENTS IN THE SOUTHERN SEA OF GALILEE, ISRAEL. RADIOCARBON 43(3): 1167–1178.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Daryl Habel]

An update on Ohalo II

In this week's issue (5 Aug 2004) of NATURE.  Seems they've found starch residues from wild barley and other cereals on a grinding stone, as well as a feature interpreted as a baking oven.  Cut and paste from Nature website: NATURE ABSTRACT CLICK HERE
***********************************
Nature 430, 670 - 673 (05 August 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02734  
 
Processing of wild cereal grains in the Upper Palaeolithic revealed by starch grain analysis

DOLORES R. PIPERNO 1,2,*, EHUD WEISS 3,*, IRENE HOLST 1 & DANI NADEL 4

1 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 2072, Balboa, Republic of Panama
2 Archaeobiology Program, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 20560, USA
3 Department of Anthropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02130, USA
4 Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel
* These authors contributed equally to this work.

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to D.R.P. (pipernod@tivoli.si.edu) and E.W. (eweiss@fas.harvard.edu).

Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and wheat (Triticum monococcum L. and Triticum turgidum L.) were among the principal 'founder crops' of southwest Asian agriculture. Two issues that were central to the cultural transition from foraging to food production are poorly understood. They are the dates at which human groups began to routinely exploit wild varieties of wheat and barley, and when foragers first utilized technologies to pound and grind the hard, fibrous seeds of these and other plants to turn them into easily digestible foodstuffs. Here we report the earliest direct evidence for human processing of grass seeds, including barley and possibly wheat, in the form of starch grains recovered from a ground stone artefact from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Ohalo II in Israel. Associated evidence for an oven-like hearth was also found at this site, suggesting that dough made from grain flour was baked. Our data indicate that routine processing of a selected group of wild cereals, combined with effective methods of cooking ground seeds, were practiced at least 12,000 years before their domestication in southwest Asia.

© 2004 Nature Publishing Group
Privacy Policy
*****************************************

Also, a nice news article from the Washington Post, speculating they might even have been making wine, at:

CLICK HERE FOR WASHINGTON POST STORY

And for those signed into whatever Nature provides free from their website, the supplementary information has a nice photograph of "the arrangement of stones forming the oven feature at Ohalo II" at:

CLICK HERE FOR NATURE SUPPLEMENT

Dar

[Mikey Brass]

An update on Ohalo II

In this week's issue (5 Aug 2004) of NATURE.  Seems they've found starch residues from wild barley and other cereals on a grinding stone, as well as a feature interpreted as a baking oven.  Cut and paste from Nature website: NATURE ABSTRACT CLICK HERE

Last paragraph:

Our research opens up a new avenue of palaeoethnobotanical
investigation in southwest Asia and other areas of the world where ground stone tool assemblages were used before the Neolithic period. Future starch grain studies have the potential to elucidate when and where grasses, other seeds and nuts, and underground plant organs first became important components of human diets and technological efforts. The functions of ground (and chipped) stone tools recovered from early archaeological sites can also be clarified
by such research. In sites of any age from southwest Asia
where other types of plant remains are not well-represented, starch grain data may stand alone as definitive evidence of cereal and other plant usage.


My note: apologies for my long absence from the board. I'm about a quarter of the way through my dissertation on the origins of social complexity in Saharan pastroal societies. When it is complete I'll be around more often.

[thuur khan]

Good evening,

I didn't know that flour was produced so early ! I thought it was only made by the Neolithics. To which culture do  the Ohalo II hunters-gatherers belong ?
I notice that they are 23,000 years old, and so they are from the same period that the Pavlovian people who presented some technologies also thought as only neolithic ones : polished stone, ceramics, textiles. (Jiri Svoboda 2004, Vandiver 1989, Adovasio 1996). Is this a coincidence ? Or did it exist a large techno-cultural wave that prefigured Neolithics ? Hem ! They are a few centuries missing...
tk

[Daryl Habel]

Good evening,

I didn't know that flour was produced so early ! I thought it was only made by the Neolithics. To which culture do  the Ohalo II hunters-gatherers belong ?

Ohalo II is assigned to the 'Kebaran culture', a phase which in the Levant immediately precedes the epi-Paleolithic/Mesolithic Natufian.

I notice that they are 23,000 years old, and so they are from the same period that the Pavlovian people who presented some technologies also thought as only neolithic ones : polished stone, ceramics, textiles. (Jiri Svoboda 2004, Vandiver 1989, Adovasio 1996).

Ohalo II is 23,000 years old because this date is from a 14C dating which has been calibrated to calendar years.  The uncalibrated 14C radiocarbon dates are nearer 19,000 radiocarbon years.  There has been some research at Dolni Vestonice done by Sarah Mason of University College, London, in which a pulverized substance from a hearth was interpreted as either being plant substance ground into flour or pounded vegetable matter into mush (processed plant matter in either case).

Is this a coincidence ? Or did it exist a large techno-cultural wave that prefigured Neolithics ? Hem ! They are a few centuries missing...
tk

Yes, one might think that, but on the other hand, the old paradigms were formulated from taphonomically biased material culture remains, preferentially preserved stone and, more rarely, bone, to the exclusion of perishable remains which could tell a different story.  That it should be possible to identify hominid gathered plant seeds and shreds in Paleolithic sites is a relatively recent idea that has gained acceptance only in the past decade (whereas before, most archaeobotanists thought such efforts would be futile in Upper Paleolithic sites).  

Dar    

[Daryl Habel]

  There has been some research at Dolni Vestonice done by Sarah Mason of University College, London, in which a pulverized substance from a hearth was interpreted as either being plant substance ground into flour or pounded vegetable matter into mush (processed plant matter in either case).

I hate to comment without references, when available. So I'll add that reference to Sarah Mason's work at Dolni Vestonice II can be found at:

CLICK HERE

Her research was published in:

Mason, S.L.R., J.G. Hather & G.C. Hillman. 1994. Preliminary investigation of the plant macro-remains from Dolní Vestonice II, and its implications for the role of plant foods in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe. Antiquity 68: 48-57.

And making a google search using the terms "sarah mason gravettian", the first five results (when I tried) yield direct leads to more of Mason's research (at Mezhirich, for example).

Dar