2021-04-14 15:42:39 • ID: 2248
Trihedral Handaxe and Flint Quariing in the Menashe Hills / Israel.
A good example for such local museums is the Upper Galilee Museum of Prehistory, founded by Amnon Assaf, which offers a wide variety of prehistoric artifacts from 780-6 k.a. BP, collected in the Hula Valley and on the grounds of a Kibbutz, mainly by one man and his non-professional collaborators: Amnon Assaf.
It was founded by Shlomo Kurtz, an Archaeologist and Holocaust surviver, who came from Hungary to the Ein Hashofet Kibbuz soon after WW II.
The Handaxe, shown here is typical for the Menashe area and similar examples are shown in the museum, which displays local artifacts from the early Paleolithic until Roman times.
Usually the Handaxes are knapped by, what I call a specific “Menashe” style, they are small (around 4 to 9 cm), rather broad and thick, often backed and made from small pebbles.
They rarely offer straight cutting-edges and seem to be focused on their tips- anyhow their functions remain a mystery.
Shimelmitz et al. (2019) recently published a paper (see external links) about Flint quarrying at Nahal Shelef, a Holocene Quarry and Workshop Site in the Menashe Hills.
Large quarries and lithic workshop sites have been detected by systematic prospection throughout the southern Levant and formed an important element of land use and structuring the landscape since the Early Paleolithic until the Bronze Age- see for example the publication about a middle Paleolithic and Neolithic extraction and reduction complex at Mt. Achbara in Eastern Galilee, Israel.
I suggest, that the general use of smaller pebbles during the Early Paleolithic reflects a conscious choice of their makers. Possibly their dimensions are an expression of the maximum possible transport capacity of their manufacturers, in their movements across the landscape.
On the other hand, Menashe Flint nodules were sometimes heavy weighted with diameters up to 50 cm. During the Neolithic they were used as cores, mainly for the production of larger bifacial axes and long blades (maybe preforms of sickles) as shown by two broken examples in Figure 4.
Resources and images in full resolution:
- Image: 2021-04-14_UZ1.jpg
- Image: 2021-04-14_UZ22.jpg
- Image: 2021-04-14_UZ2.jpg
- Image: 2021-04-15_20210415_sickle.jpg
- Extern Link: www.researchgate.net…338012703_Nahal_Shelef_A_Holocene_Quarry_and_Workshop_Site_in_the_Menashe_Hills_Israel
- Extern Link: www.academia.edu…A_Middle_Paleolithic_and_Neolithic_Chalcolithic_flint_extraction_and_reduction_complex_at_Mt_Achbara_Eastern_Galilee_Israel_ARA_16_2018_14_33_