In August 2017, a salvage excavation was conducted at Kibbutz Sha‘alvim (Permit No. A-8085; map ref. 198434–67/641942; Fig. 1), prior to construction. The excavation, undertaken on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and funded by Gezer Regional Council, was directed by O. Danziger, with the assistance of Y. Amrani (administration), M. Kahan (surveying and drafting), A. Peretz (field photography), E.C.M. van den Brink (pottery), L. Brailovsky (flints) and I. Korenfeld and A. ‘Azab.
The excavation was located near Tel Sha‘alvim (for background and previous excavations, see Arbel 2008) and revealed the remains of a field wall (W105; length 2 m; Figs. 2, 3) built of Mishash-formation flint and limestone fieldstones. A trench excavated on the wall’s northern side yielded potsherds (not drawn) dating from the Intermediate Bronze Age and the Early Islamic period. On the surface and in a trench flint items of the Middle Paleolithic period were found (Brailovsky, below). A Hasmonean coin (late second–mid-first centuries BCE; IAA 162811) was also found on the surface.
Flint Finds
Lena Brailovsky
The flint assemblage comprises 569 items (Table 1). Most of them are fresh and have sharp edges. They are made of local, regionally characteristic Mishash flint (Segal et al. 2006)—an opaque to semi-translucent, gray-beige and dark brown flint. Many items are coated with a whitish-gray patina, sometimes even double patina. While most specimens cannot be attributed to a specific period or industry, a few items are dated to the Middle Paleolithic period and the Middle Bronze–Iron Ages.
Knapping Debitage. The debitage is characterized by a flake-oriented industry: over half of the assemblage (71.2%) consists of flakes and primary flakes, while only 1.9% are blades and bladelets (Table 1). Among the flakes, a distinctive group of six pointed items is notable (1.1%; Fig. 4:1). These specimens resemble Levallois points but lack significant features: the curved profile, the striking platform’s thickness and type, and the scar pattern. Similar items have been discovered in Middle Paleolithic assemblages, such as Nahal Mahanayim (Sharon and Oron 2014). Notable among the core trimming elements (CTE; 5.6%) is a sizeable ridge blade (50 × 62 × 193 mm) and three débordant flakes, which are particularly characteristic of the Levallois technique and are a prominent component of Middle Paleolithic assemblages (Beyries and Boëda 1983). Among the flint chunks (7.2%), worked flint items were noted, but they were too worn to be identified. Flint chips—ventral items smaller than 20 mm, a by-product of the flint-knapping and use—are notably absent. Such items usually comprise a substantial part of the assemblage and often indicate in situ flint knapping. In this instance, the absence of flint chips is attributable to the excavation method that did not engage in sediment sifting and gathered the flint items selectively.
Table 1. Flint items from the excavation
Item
|
N
|
%
|
Primary flake
|
105
|
18.5
|
Flake
|
300
|
52.7
|
Pointed flakes
|
6
|
1.1
|
Blade/bladelet
|
11
|
1.9
|
Core trimming elements (CTE)
|
32
|
5.6
|
Cores
|
42
|
7.4
|
Tools
|
28
|
4.9
|
Chunks
|
41
|
7.2
|
Hammerstone
|
3
|
0.5
|
Miscellaneous
|
1
|
0.2
|
Total
|
569
|
100
|
The Core Assemblage. Forty-two items are classified as cores. The most widespread core type has a single striking platform (19%). Amorphous cores are also common (16%), while other cores—like those with two striking platforms on the same side (7%), opposed sides (5%) and at right angles (2%)—are less frequent. Flint pebbles and nodules with fewer than three flaking scars (tested nodules) comprise 21% of the assemblage, and core fragments comprise 10% of the assemblage. The diagnostic cores include one broken Levallois core (Fig. 4:2), which was used to produce one preferential flake and exhibits a centripetal scar pattern, four discoidal cores and three cores on flakes. All diagnostic cores are typical of the Mousterian culture and the Middle Paleolithic period (see Hovers 2009) but are also found toward the end of the Lower Paleolithic period (in the Levant, 1.40–0.25 million years BP; see Barzilai, Malinsky-Buller and Ackermann 2006; Malinsky-Buller, Grosman and Marder 2011; and also personal observations from Jaljuliya).
Most cores are made on nodules (26), others on chunks or unidentified items (13), and three on flakes. More than 85% of the cores bear final scars of flake production. Most cores were abandoned due to imperfections in the raw material (e.g. cracks and defects; 40%); others were abandoned because of knapping errors (e.g. hinge scars; 36%) or severe size reduction (7%; exhausted cores); why the remainder (17%) were abandoned is unknown. Most cores (40%) retain very little cortex—less than a quarter of the item’s surface—26% of the items have cortex on between a quarter and a half of their surface, 17% of the cores retain between half and three-quarters of their cortex, 7% retain most of their cortex (over three-quarters of the area) and 10% have no cortex. This distribution suggests that effort was invested to remove the cortex from the flint chunks while shaping the cores. However, the poor quality of the raw material, evident in cracks and calcareous defects, often forced the flintknappers to abandon the cores in the early stages. Early core abandonment is also apparent in their size: Most of the cores were only moderately smaller than the tested nodules, indicating that they were not fully exploited (Table 2).
Table 2. Average measurements of whole and broken cores
Core type
|
Length (mm)
|
Width (mm)
|
Thickness (mm)
|
Single platform (N=9)
|
40.6
|
51.8
|
44.2
|
Double platform (N=6)
|
47.1
|
40.8
|
34.5
|
Discoidal (N=4)
|
58.5
|
60.5
|
24.2
|
Levallois (N=1)
|
41.0
|
35.0
|
27.0
|
Nodule* (N=9)
|
63.5
|
66.0
|
51.2
|
Amorphous (N=6)
|
45.0
|
48.8
|
38.0
|
Core on flake (N=3)
|
35.3
|
38.3
|
18.3
|
*Nodules with fewer than three removals.
The Tool Assemblage. The assemblage includes 28 tools; most are ad-hoc tools (Table 3), and only three are diagnostic: two sickle blades and one scraper. The two sickle blades are made on proximally and distally truncated trapezoidal flakes. One of them (11 × 40 × 44 mm; Fig. 4:3) has a thinned percussion bulb and a denticulated working edge on its right side that retains a narrow band of sheen on the dorsal and ventral faces. The other blade is smaller (18 × 28 × 36 mm); it has a denticulated working edge on its left side but, unlike the former, has no visible sickle sheen. It is, therefore, either a still sickle segment in preparation or one that was not used. These are geometric-type blades characteristic of Middle Bronze–Iron Age flint assemblages (Rosen 1982; 1997; Rosen and Vardi 2014). The scraper is concave and made on a flake. Its working edge was formed with a fine abrupt retouch on its right side. This type of tool is characteristic of flint assemblages from the Middle Paleolithic period (Bordes 1961).
Table 3. Tool types
Type
|
N
|
Sickle blades
|
2
|
Scraper
|
1
|
Awls
|
4
|
Burin
|
1
|
Notches and denticulates
|
13
|
Retouched blade
|
1
|
Retouched flakes
|
3
|
Double tool
|
1
|
Other
|
2
|
Total
|
28
|
The small flint assemblage from the current excavation contains a few diagnostic items that indicate human activity in the area during the Middle Paleolithic period and the Bronze–Iron Ages. The assemblage comprises mostly flakes, cores, chunks and tools, and it is primarily an ad-hoc assemblage. The small number of cores and ‘formal’ tools is unusual. Nevertheless, it has been observed at Lower and Middle Paleolithic flint mining sites in the Galilee (Ekshtain et al. 2011; Yaroshevich et al. 2017), as well as at Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites of flint mining, extraction and use in the Modi‘in region (Spivak 2010; Zbenovich 2014; Grosman and Goren-Inbar 2016; Yaroshevich 2016). One may propose that the flint assemblage indicates a Middle Paleolithic flint procurement site that drew on the locally available Mishash formation flint. While the site does not extend directly over outcrops of this raw material, the flint may have derived from the nearby streambeds—Nahal Sha‘alvim to the north and Nahal Ayalon to the south—which are only a few hundred meters away. The well-preserved condition of most of the items shows that the flint was knapped at the site. The current excavation is the first in the region to produce flint items attributable to the Middle Paleolithic period and the Mousterian culture: pointed items, ridge flakes, cores on flakes, discoid cores and the centripetal Levallois core. The nearest sites of this time are the Mousterian sites of Nesher-Ramla (Zaidner et al. 2014), Tinshemet Cave, Deir Qadis Cave and Shuqba Cave (Frumkin et al. 2016), and the Acheulian site of Ramla-South (Gorzalczany and Spivak 2008).
The two geometric sickle blades attest to human activity in the region during the Bronze–Iron Ages (Rosen 1982; 1997). Their presence at the site is not surprising; previous excavations near Tel Sha‘alvim recovered remains of both the Middle Bronze Age II and the Iron Age II, including geometric sickle blades (Arbel 2008; Parnos 2008, and see references there).
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