Jürgen Richter

Reconstructing changes in human behaviour during the Pleistocene, particularly when based on lithic or other artefact types, is often hindered by the traditional categorisation of these materials into discrete entities. The Early Upper Palaeolithic of Mediterranean Eurasia – comprising the Protoaurignacian, Early Aurignacian, Northern Ahmarian, and Southern Ahmarian technocomplexes – represents the first emergence of a pan-European cultural unit. However, this conventional categorisation into discrete entities obscures a deeper understanding of the dynamics of Homo sapiens’ dispersal across Eurasia during this period. In this study, we apply Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to assess patterns of reduction processes, technological variability, and inter-assemblage homogeneity across technocomplexes. Using the comprehensive dataset provided in this paper, we analyse variability by grouping it into three domains: platform preparation, convexity management, and retouch. Solutrean Upper Palaeolithic assemblages from the Iberian Peninsula are used as an outgroup. We selected blanks, retouched and unmodified ones, and we focused on blades and bladelets, which are the typical end-product of the Upper Palaeolithic knapping. We excluded cores to avoid pitfalls of late or early reduction patterns, as our blanks cover most of the knapping sequence. We applied MCA to Early Upper Palaeolithic blanks for the first time, providing a geographically widespread comparison. Our results show that the MCA of blank attributes, particularly those describing the preparation of convexities, is sufficiently robust to reveal the distinctiveness of Early Upper Palaeolithic technologies relative to Solutrean ones. Our analysis also confirms technological similarities between the Southern Ahmarian and the Protoaurignacian, particularly in bladelet production, reinforcing the interpretation of bladelets as a primary production target in Early Upper Palaeolithic lithic technology. This study contributes laying the foundation for open-access databases, standardised analytical protocols, and MCA to support efforts in understanding hominin dispersal and interaction during this pivotal phase of prehistory.

The Al Teibeh area has emerged as a significant contributor to our archaeological understanding of the Late Epipalaeolithic period (ca. 14,500–11,500 cal BP), thanks to new, substantial evidence. This study presents preliminary results from an investigation into looting pits at the Al Mintar and Om Sanam sites, which are located to the south and southwest of the town of Al Teibeh in southern Syria. These sites are prime examples of the scale of the disaster and the irreparable loss to Syria’s archaeological record. However, examination of a looting pit (Pit 2) at Al Mintar revealed a discernible stratigraphy, unveiling an in situ accumulation of bone and stone artefacts alongside bedrock mortars and pestles surrounding the pit. Preliminary indications of circular structures and lithic toolkits, probably dating to the Late Natufian period, were also recorded. In contrast, the looting pit at Om Sanam primarily yielded lithic toolkits, particularly lunate tools, which were collected from its periphery. The stratigraphic sequence and concentration of stone and bone artefacts within the looting pits, particularly at Al Mintar, suggest multiple phases of site occupation. This evidence deserves further investigation through future excavations.

In Central Germany, rhino images were engraved on stone objects during the Magdalenian period, before the global extinction of the woolly rhino around 14,000 cal BP. Our recent excavations, at the Magdalenian open-air settlement site of Bad Kösen-Lengefeld, added to this record, yielding a limestone slab with a presumptive rhino portrait from an exactly stratified, thoroughly documented and well-dated cultural context. Here we present the unique limestone slab with an engraved animal image, unusual because of the head omitted, but — by contrast — aspects of the rear expressed in detail. During the excavation, the limestone slab was found related to a dwelling structure marked by postholes grouped around a central fireplace. Reindeer and horse were hunted close to, and killed at the site, and ice foxes were exploited for their furs. ¹⁴C-samples collected from all parts of the settlement attest for a short period of occupation(s) around 15,350 ± 50 cal BP making the rhino portrait one of the latest of its kind, eventually documenting the last sightings of woolly rhino in general, by humans. Moreover, its found context would make this animal portrait a fixture in Magdalenian style chronology.

The Ahmarian is the earliest fully fledged Upper Palaeolithic Levantine industry, and its hallmark is the el-Wad point, assumed to be a projectile implement. The Ahmarian is a blade-bladelet volumetric industry; however, bladelet production has frequently been portrayed as undifferentiated or secondary to blade production. El-Wad points are blades or bladelets with a fine to steep lateral retouch, often further shaping the tip. The role of bladelets and blades, both in the retouched and unretouched assemblages, is highly debated in order to refine Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) taxonomical and technological issues. Here, we use data coming from our excavations at the southern Ahmarian site of Al-Ansab 1 to reconsider the role of bladelets and el-Wad points in the assemblage. We show that bladelet production was key, and blades were mostly used to shape the convexities to produce convergent bladelets. El-Wad point blanks mostly stemmed from an early stage of the reduction sequence, being conventionally classified as small blades or big bladelets. Modification of these blanks likely improved their suboptimal shape, while smaller bladelets were not modified. Our detailed review of the existing literature produced corresponding evidence regarding lithic technology, while the exact function of el-Wad points is still pending on complementary use-wear analyses. With our new data, we expect to provoke a reconsideration of the Ahmarian technological system. As bladelets attract more and more attention in EUP research, we propose that the southern Ahmarian had already fully completed the technological and cultural shift to the preferred use of small projectile inserts.

Our field data from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Al-Ansab 1 (Jordan) and from a pollen sequence in the Dead Sea elucidate the role that changing Steppe landscapes played in facilitating anatomically modern human populations to enter a major expansion and consolidation phase, known as the „Early Ahmarian“, several millennia subsequent to their initial Marine Isotope Stage 4/3 migration from Africa, into the Middle East. The Early Ahmarian techno-cultural unit covers a time range between 45 ka–37 ka BP. With so far more than 50 sites found, the Early Ahmarian is the first fully Upper Palaeolithic techno-cultural unit exclusively and undisputedly related to anatomically modern human populations. In order to better understand the potentially attractive features of the Early Ahmarian environmental context that supported its persistence for over 8,000 years, we carried out a decennial research program in Jordan and in the Dead Sea. This included (1) a geoscientific and archaeological survey program in the Wadi Sabra (Jordan) with a particular focus on excavations at the Early Ahmarian site of Al-Ansab 1 alongside the detailed analysis of Quaternary sediments from the same area and (2) palaeobotanical research based on Quaternary lake deposits from the Dead Sea. Our pollen data from the Dead Sea indicate slow, low frequency vegetational variation with expanding Artemisia steppe, from 60 to 20 ka BP (MIS 3–2). Here, we see a reciprocal assimilation of southern and northern Levantine vegetation zones thereby enhancing a long-lasting south-to-north steppe corridor. The same integration process accelerated about 40 ka ago, when forested areas retreated in the Lebanese Mountains. The process then extended to encompass an area from Southern Lebanon to the Sinai Peninsula. We argue that, at the same time, the carriers of the Early Ahmarian techno-cultural unit extended their habitat from their original Mediterranean biome (in the North) to the Saharo-Arabian biome (to the South). Our excavation of Al-Ansab 1, a campsite at the eastern margins of the Early Ahmarian settlement area, indicates far reaching annual movements of small, highly mobile hunter-gatherer groups. We assume a low degree of settlement complexity, still allowing for habitat extension of the Early Ahmarian into the margins of the Levantine corridor. Due to our radiometric dates, our combined archaeological and environmental record sheds light on an evolved phase of the Early Ahmarian, around 38 ka ago, rather than the starting phase of this techno-cultural unit. Possible application of our model to the starting phase of the Early Ahmarian remains an aspect of future research.