Professor Dorothy A.E. Garrod's 1928 excavation of the Mousterian Layer D at Shukbah Cave in the Wadi en-Natuf (Palestine) has been neglected by prehistorians in favour of the Epipalaeolithic Layer B with its Natufian culture, for which Shukbah is the typesite. The excavation of Layer D is now re-examined with the aid of Garrod's own unpublished documentation and photographs, and the lithic industry analysed in the light of her conclusion that it was the work of a late Middle Palaeolithic hominid population, probably of Neanderthal type. Application of current analytical methods to approximately one half of the recovered assemblage confirms Garrod's correlation of the Shukbah Mousterian with Tabun Layer B in the later model for the Mount Carmel Levantine Palaeolithic succession. Comparison is made, and consistency demonstrated, with the late Mousterian industry of Kebara Cave (Mount Carmel, excavation 1982–90) and the Shukbah D assemblage is further considered in the wider regional context of approximately contemporary sites ranging from southern Jordan to northern Syria. Suggestions are made regarding future excavation at Shukbah.
In 1925 a fragmentary human skull was uncovered in Zuttiyeh Cave in Palestine. Over seventy years later it is still the oldest human fossil in the Levant. The excavator was a young Englishman at the beginning of a career which lasted less than ten years. Since his untimely death in 1942 new generations have shed fresh light on his original discovery (Gisis and BarYosef 1974). This fragmentary skull -albeit an isolated find -is now placed with other Eurasian fossils in the time range of 250-350,000 years ago (Bar-Yosef 1992, 196), and has particular relevance to the current debate on the origin of modern humans. It is thus of interest to recall and assess the short life and career of Francis Turville-Petre, whose first discovery is as important today as it was at the time of its announcement, and whose contributions to our understanding of the prehistoric cultures of the Near East should be recognized.Francis Turville-Petre was quickly forgotten in Palestine. He left little trace -a few papers and articles, occasional footnotes, one now rare book. In recent works his name has been confused with his illustrious contemporary Flinders Petrie. A local tradition persists that he was an army officer, perhaps an engineer, an amateur. He was none of these. He was a trained archaeologist, but a man whose nature also led him to a life in a different world where he became notorious, though valued and often loved by a circle of friends who knew little or nothing of his profession. Among these were the English writers who made their names in the inter-war years, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender. They portrayed him vividly, often barely concealing his identity. Thus by fitting together the two halves of his life from both archaeological and literary sources the real man can be revealed. THE EARLY YEARSFrancis Adrian Joseph Turville-Petre (Fig. I) was the eldest son of a soldier and country gentleman, born on 4 March 190 I into an English Catholic family of long and distinguished lineage. His early childhood was spent happily enough with his sisters, Gwendeline, Marion and Alethea, and younger brother Gabriel l in a quiet and self-contained world of nannies and governesses at Bosworth Hall in the Leicestershire village of Husbands Bosworth. The Oratory School in Birmingham noticed and encouraged his boyhood interest in the remote past, and when Oxford followed his future as a prehistorian was shaped and guided by his tutor at Exeter College, the pioneer anthropologist Robert Ranulph Marett.At this time the university population was greatly enlarged by men and women taking up their studies after the traumatic interruption of war. Among Turville-Petre's colleagues enrolled, under R. R. Marett's direction, for the Oxford Diploma in Anthropology was Dorothy Garrod, aged 29, and now -after war service and the loss of her three beloved brothers -set on a career in archaeology and prehistory.As a young man Marett had studied in Berlin, and it is a reasonable assumption that he brought to the attention of his stude...
Since her death almost 30 years ago, researchers interested in the life and work of one of the greatest prehistorians of her generation have searched, largely in vain, for material additional to Dorothy Garrod's published work. It seems they need search no longer.
In this communication, which is submitted in response to the invitation sent by your President to the Council of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland asking them to nominate one of their Fellows to report on recent archaeological research in Scotland, I propose briefly to review the recent discoveries and developments that have taken place in our endeavours to unravel the story of prehistoric and later man in Scotland. I shall begin at the earlier periods, and, working forward, indicate the progress we have made, the problems we see before us, and the manner in which we have dealt with the various questions as they arose.
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