Geoarchaeological Investigation of Site Formation and Depositional Environments at the Middle Palaeolithic Open-Air Site of ‘Ein Qashish, Israel

Abstract

'Ein Qashish is a Middle Palaeolithic open-air site in the southern Levant, encompassing an excavated area of several hundred square meters and a 4.5-m thick stratigraphic section. Its placement within a fluvial system, combined with the presence of Neanderthal skeletal remains and diverse material culture finds, presents possibilities J Paleo Arch (2018) Palaeolithic. The aim of this study is to investigate the depositional and post-depositional processes at 'Ein Qashish, based on the stratigraphic section exposed in the 2013 excavation season. We employed field observations, sedimentology, micromorphology, mineralogy, elemental and isotopic analyses. Our results indicate that the sedimentary sequence, including four archaeological occupation levels, accumulated in a generally low-energy alluvial environment with evidence for syn-depositional localised seasonal water bodies. On-going post-depositional processes related to wetting and drying cycles include shrink-swell and calcite and gypsum pedofeatures. Bone mineral is relatively well preserved. The data suggest limited fluvial and argilliturbation reworking of artefacts, indicating that spatial patterning of lithic and bone assemblages is rather well preserved in some areas. The current analyses do not indicate the presence of combustion features or fire-related residues at the site, although burned lithics occur in low frequencies. The absence of combustion features in the large excavated area and deep stratigraphy contrasts with patterns observed in Middle Palaeolithic cave occupations in the region, adding nuance to a dataset that will enable a better understanding of human activities under sheltered and open-air conditions.

Persistent Neanderthal occupation of the open-air site of ‘Ein Qashish, Israel

“…Micromorphological work was conducted at the Kimmel Center, the Weizmann Institute of Science. The results of latter work have been reported in [34].…”

“…At such times the coastline would have been several km to the west, the continental shelf exposed [19,36,40–42], and the climate was wetter. This suggestion is supported by the traces of marine sand at the site [35] as well as by adsorption of barium and chlorine, elements that are associated with seawater spray, in Unit 4 [34,38].…”

“…These observations are consistent with the results of macromorphological [19] and micromorphological [35] studies of sediments from Units 1–3 in the 2009 excavations north of the site (i.e., equivalent to Units 3 and 5 of the 2013 excavations). On the basis of micromorphological and geochemical studies, it was suggested that phase III (Unit 4) was a water body extending across an area of at least 600 m 2 [34,38]. The Fe-rich, reddish clay and the presence of large gypsum crystals indicate cycles of dissolution and re-precipitation through evaporation from the proposed shallow water body.…”

“…Unit 1, in which there were MP lithics, was only exposed in geological trenching but not in the excavation areas, and therefore will not be discussed further. A micromorphological study suggests that fluvial and argilliturbation reworking of sediments in the different areas and various stratigraphic units was limited to the scale of a few centimeters to a few decimeters [34]. Because of the high variability of syn- and post-depositional processes at these vertical and lateral scales, some areas at the site present pristine configurations of artifacts and/or faunal remains [8], see below), whereas disturbances in other parts (e.g., 2009–2011 area) of the site are constrained by the scale of the fluvial and turbation process [31,34].…”

“…We present the geological and cultural stratigraphy of the site, taking into account the effects of various depositional processes [8,34]. Material culture remains are then presented in their contexts within the four main MP occupation units.…”