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2017-06-07 04:24:21   •   ID: 1608

Levallois- Mousterian near Geula Cave (Mt. Carmel; Israel)

Figure 1
These are two "Tabun-B" surface findings from the Mt. Carmel, found during the 1950ies near Geula(h) cave. Geula Cave is situated on the eastern slope of Mount Carmel , 205 m above sealevel. It is 2.5 km  south oft he point where the outlet of Nahal Gibborim- Wadi Rushmiya in Arabic- flows into the Mediterranean.

The site now lies in the built-up area of the Geulah quarter of Haifa. The cave, and a narrow, undisturbed ledge along the face of the rocky cliff are remnants of a former, larger cave destroyed by recent quarry operations. Excavations in the two chambers of the cave and on the ledge-called a terrace by its excavator-were carried out by E. Wreschner in four seasons, 1958-1964.

Geula Cave was especially rich in small mammal remains and characterized by very little sign of human activity and is unique among the Carmel caves with a Levallois-Mousterian in yielding not only the presence of carnivores, but also that of porcupines, with limited evidence to scavenging and hunting by either hyenas or humans.

Three layers with "Tabun-B" characteristics were discovered, identical in archaeological content throughout the excavated area; only their thickness varied in the cave and on the terrace. In layer B two stages could be distinguished and were designated accordingly. In all Layers Levallois points were the most frequent artifacts (up to 20%) Layer A: 10 to 30 m thick, with gray dusty soil; contained Levallois- Mousterian flint implements, horn and teeth fragments; and 2,176 animal bones.

Layer B1: 25 to 40 cm thick, with brown, powdery soil; contained Levallois flint implements, bone tools, animal bones, ocher, and Hyena coprolites. Layer B2: 40 to 90 cm thick, with blackish-brown soil embedded with charcoal fragments; contained Levallois flint implements of uniform size all larger than those found in layer B1), bone tools, and animal bones. The two B layers yielded 9412 bones, including horns and teeth; 318 bone tools; and three small human bone fragments.

Layer C  5 to 20 cm thick, with light-brown powdery soil; rested on bedrock, filling cavities and crevices. The soil was sterile. A sediment analysis of layers C-A (from bottom to top) by E. Schmid showed a change from a warm, humid climate (layer C) to a warm, dry one (layers B2 to B1), followed by a change to colder, wet conditions (layer A). An early C-14 examination of charred bones from layer B1 gave a minimum date of  42 ± 1,7 k.a. BP. This is also the C-14 date of some human remains, most  possibly assigned to AMH.

Renewed salvage excavations in hithero untouched areas since 2016 allowed to reevaluate the Geula cave complex, which also included the B-Strata described by Wreschner. These excavations revealed a constant mode of Levallois lithic technology in the remnant strata. Levallois production was focused on bidirectional and centripetal core preparation modes.

Figure 2
The study of faunal remains confirmed intermittend hyena and porcupine activities. OSL dating showed that human occupation began as early as 175 k.a., but that the major human activities are dated to MIS5 (Barzilai et al. 2019 and 2021).

Porcupines are rare in the faunal record- therefore I show charming porcupine from the Royal Château de Blois (French: "Château Royal de Blois") is located in the Loir-et-Cher Département in the Loire Valley, in France, in the center of the city of Blois.

The residence of several French kings, it is also the place where Joan of Arc went in 1429 to be blessed by the Archbishop of Reims before departing with her army to drive the English from Orléans. (Free License by Wikipedia).

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