Hamadine
Coordinates: 35 ° 39 ′ 0 ″ N , 39 ° 55 ′ 0 ″ E
Hamadine is an old Paleolithic site in Syria . The site with its flint artifacts is one of the oldest places where the presence of early humans in Syria can be proven. The stone artifacts were assigned to the time between MIS 36 and 22, which corresponds roughly to the time a little before 1.2 to about 0.85 million years. All cores and tees are in the National Museum Damascus , as are the 14 hand axes from Hamadine.
Survey, geology, dating
In 1978, as part of a survey by the Center national de la recherche scientifique (Project RCP 438), ancient Paleolithic artifacts were discovered. In the course of the survey, the greatest accumulation of ancient Paleolithic artifacts was discovered in Ain Abu Jemaa, which is about 25 km northwest of Deir ez-Zor . 450 artifacts were found there alone. A little further downstream, Ain Tabous contained around 220 pieces. Hamadine, above the two aforementioned sites, about 37 km southeast of Raqqa , also contained a large number of artifacts, namely 370.
The dating referred to the sediment layers. The sediments of Ain Abu Jemaa and Ain Tabous represent the stratotypes of the discoverers, that is, of Jacques Besançon and Paul Sanlaville . They are called Qf II formation there , where “Qf” stands for “Quaternary fluvial”, a designation that in turn refers to the river Euphrates and the geological epoch of the Quaternary . Due to the strong abrasion , it is assumed that the artifacts are more likely to be attributed to the lower gravel layer. It is not clear where exactly they were discovered. The basalt that could be seen elsewhere above the same layer, namely in Ayash (northwest of Deir ez-Zor), has been dated to more than 400,000 years. This means that Qf II should be assigned to at least MIS 12. It remains unclear when the gravel layers could have deposited between MIS 36 and MIS 22, so that an age of up to 1.2 million years can be ascribed to them, but at least 850,000 years.
The Hamadine finds are also assigned to Qf II. Sand and silt have been deposited over the bottom layer of gravel . Here, too, strong abrasion of the artifacts suggest storage in the gravel, i.e. in the lowest layer of sediment.
Andrew Douglas Shaw assumed that Qf III is older or at least as old as Qf II. Qf II, however, is assigned to MIS 36, whereby the time span can extend to MIS 22. Hamadine is one of the sites that document the earliest residence of hominins outside of Africa and also in the Middle East.
Lithic analysis
Shaw examined 61 cores and 14 hand axes from Hamadine in the National Museum of Damascus . All artifacts show severe abrasion, which is typical of pronounced fluvial movements. At the same time, they are probably younger than MIS 36, but older than MIS 22, i.e. at least 880,000 to 850,000 years old.
All devices are made of coarse-grained chert or flint. The severely affected cortex, also known as the cortex, does not allow an assignment to a specific place of origin. The devices were probably made from round pieces picked up from the river bed. The only known point in question on the Euphrates, where such starting materials would otherwise have been found, is about 90 km away. Outside the river valley there is another possible place of origin in Jebel al-Bishri , 65 km away.
The cores have an average maximum length of 82.4 mm, the minimum length is 43.8 mm. They weigh an average of 269.8 g, with the extreme values being 51 and 727 g. They are to be understood as so-called “migrating platform cores”, as they are characterized by ad hoc discounts. They were processed very few times to win a tee, and the number of tees won was also small. The cores were never processed for long when reducing. The largely preserved cortex also indicates only short processing episodes.
Of the 250 mostly medium-sized, thick cuts, at least 214 go back to working with a hard hammer (it was not worked with an antler hammer, a bone or a piece of hardwood), the rest cannot be precisely determined here. The size and shape may be due to the picking up of more conspicuous pieces during the survey, but also to the destructive force that fluvial transport exerts on the artifacts, in which smaller pieces are more likely to be destroyed than large ones. The platform was hardly changed during processing, the core apparently seldom rotated, so that the reductions were more unidirectional. Only a single flaked flake from Hamadine was processed further.
The hand axes are on average 106.2 mm long, 67.3 mm wide and 44.9 mm thick. The minimum values are 60.9, 38.3 and 20.4 mm, the maximum values are 138.5, then 84.3 and finally 66.0 mm. They were obtained from round raw material, from which a bifacial edge was removed by reducing it (probably using a hard hammer, which could be detected in 6 of the 14 pieces).
Overall, the existing form of the source materials, i.e. river pebbles that were picked up, had a significant influence on the processing strategies of the local hominins, which was also shown at the other two sites, Ain Abu Jemaa and Ain Tabous.
literature
- Andrew Douglas Shaw: The Earlier Palaeolithic of Syria: Settlement History, Technology and Landscape-use in the Orontes and Euphrates Valleys , PhD, University of Durham, 2008, pp. 207-214.
- Andrew Douglas Shaw: The Earlier Palaeolithic of Syria. Reinvestigating the Evidence from the Orontes and Euphrates Valleys , Oxford 2012, pp. 27-35.
Remarks
- ^ Andrew Douglas Shaw: The Earlier Palaeolithic of Syria: Settlement History, Technology and Landscape-use in the Orontes and Euphrates Valleys , PhD, University of Durham, 2008, p. 214.
- ^ Andrew Shaw: The Earlier Palaeolithic of Syria. Reinvestigating the Evidence from the Orontes and Euphrates Valleys , Oxford 2012, p. 27. For the activities of the project, cf. Lorraine Copeland : The Survey of RCP 438 in 1979 , in: Paul Sanlaville (Ed.): Holocene Settlement in North Syria , Oxford 1985, pp. 67-98.
- ^ Andrew Douglas Shaw: The Earlier Palaeolithic of Syria. Reinvestigating the Evidence from the Orontes and Euphrates Valleys , Oxford 2012, p. 27.
- ^ Francis Hours : Le Paléolithique inferieur de la Syrie et du Liban. Le Point de la question en 1980 , in: Jacques Cauvin , Paul Sanlaville (Ed.): Préhistoire du Levant. Chronologie et organization de I'espace depuis les origines jusqu'au Vie millenaire, Colloques Internationaux du Center national de la recherche scientifique , 598, Lyon, 1981, pp. 165–183, here: p. 180.
- ^ Andrew Douglas Shaw: The Earlier Palaeolithic of Syria. Reinvestigating the Evidence from the Orontes and Euphrates Valleys , Oxford 2012, Table 5.1.5, p. 33.
- ^ Andrew Douglas Shaw: The Earlier Palaeolithic of Syria. Reinvestigating the Evidence from the Orontes and Euphrates Valleys , Oxford 2012, Table 5.16, p. 33.