Maysoon Al-Nahar

Southern Jordan occupies a key position at the interface of the Levant and Northern Arabia, critical for understanding Paleolithic adaptation. Here we report two newly identified findspots in the Jurf ed-Darawish basin, where lithic artefacts document human presence from the Lower to Upper Paleolithic. The Acheulean component aligns with middle to late phases of the Levantine sequence, while the Middle Paleolithic assemblage shows both Levantine affinities and broader Saharo-Arabian adaptation. Upper Paleolithic blades parallel southern Jordanian assemblages, though the absence of UP sites in northern Arabia suggests a disruption of earlier bilateral connectivity. Recurrent occupation was likely facilitated by abundant knappable raw material suited to varied reduction systems, alongside evidence for surface water availability. The geographical continuity between the southern Levant and northern Arabia would have facilitated inter-regional movement without the dramatic climatic amelioration required for Out of Africa dispersals, making the region a priority for future Paleolithic investigation.

Using a count method of complete and proximal burned debitage ≥ 2.5 cm, Dibble and colleagues recorded a pattern of fire use by southwestern France Neandertals whereby fire use was more common in warmer rather than colder intervals of the late Pleistocene. A recent work by Abdolahzadeh and colleagues indicates that this pattern is also found in other areas of Europe. Here, we apply Dibble and colleagues’ burned lithics count method to assess fire use by Late Upper Paleolithic and Early Epipaleolithic modern humans living in the western highlands of Jordan. While the Levant is more southerly than Europe, colder conditions pertained during the Last Glacial Maximum. Our investigations aimed at examining if their count method is also applicable to modern human contexts and in areas that, while colder during the Last Glacial Maximum, would have been less cold overall than Europe. We conclude that their method of counting burned lithics is useful in these later contexts, and that, overall, modern humans living during the peak of the Late Glacial Maximum in the eastern Levant used fire somewhat more frequently than during warmer intervals. We also briefly touch on the longer-term perspective for fire use in the eastern Levant by discussing the Initial Upper Paleolithic and Middle Paleolithic site of ‘Ain Difla in the Wadi al-Hasa area. Such assessments have the potential to offer insights into modern human behaviors.

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.

Using the Paleolithic in Jordan as an example, we review aspects of international, multidisciplinary collaboration that can lead to areas of conflict between foreign and indigenous archaeologists. We begin with some observations on the logic of inference to underscore problems arising from differences in the intellectual traditions involved in this research. This excursion into epistemology (how we know what we think we know about the past) is followed by an analysis of the practical considerations that can create difficulties in various aspects of the research process, from proposal writing through final publication. We conclude with suggestions to alleviate these problems and discuss where to situate paleoarchaeology within the larger context of transnational collaboration.