Hummal
Coordinates: 35 ° 9 ′ 0 ″ N , 38 ° 43 ′ 0 ″ E
As Hummal even Bir Onusi , a group of five is the Middle Palaeolithic dated archaeological layers , made up, in the area of the archaeological site el-Kowm in northeastern Syria could be detected. El-Kowm comprises a total of 20 m thick layers that show traces of the period between the Early Paleolithic and the Upper Paleolithic . The layers in Hummal, which gave the archaeological culture of Hummalien its name, i.e. layers 6a to 6c, then 7a and 7c, or the stone artefacts found in them , were dated to an age of 200,000 years. So far, only the area around the artesian well has been excavated in Hummal. Hummal is most similar to layers F and E of the Hayonim cave in northern Israel , as well as to the undated layers B and C of the Abu Sif site, a cave in Jordan . The Hummalien was tentatively assigned to the early Middle Paleolithic, the Middle and later Middle Paleolithic the cultures of Yabrudien and Tayacien.
Geography, geology
The El Kowm oasis is 450 m above sea level in the steppe between Rasafa , Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor . It is a depression 20 km in diameter in the mountain range that extends from Anti-Lebanon to the Euphrates . It separates the relatively water-rich areas in the north from the extremely dry Arabian desert in the south.
The area is characterized by a series of artesian wells that are connected to deeper layers. Since the beginning of human presence, manufacturers of stone tools have been drawn to the area, especially the archaeologically significant well, which was active for about 780,000 years. The high quality outcrops from Flint may have been essential to the early human visitors . In 2012, a total of 206 storage sites and 142 sites with paleolithic stone artifacts were known in the area of El Kowm, which go back up to a million years.
The Hummal site is related to the aforementioned artesian well of varying importance. Therefore the sediment formation is influenced on the one hand by the most important erosion factor in the region, the wind, and on the other hand by the activity of this well. Its water, in turn, consistently attracted animals that human hunters had been using as part of their supply since the early Paleolithic. This is reflected in 20 find layers that reach a thickness of 20 m, of which five layers are called Hummal, as they can be assigned to a group of finds with great similarity.
Digs
Systematic excavations began in Hummal in 1999 under the direction of Jean-Marie Le Tensorer and Sultan Muhesen . Layers 6a to 6c, then 7a and 7c of the 20 layers of El-Kowm are found in situ. The site gave its name to Hummalien, an archaeological culture . Excavations took place there between 2001 and 2005 and from 2009 to 2010.
In addition, a blade industry was found in a huge sand store called αh . This was also several meters high and had sagged into the middle of the sinkhole between layers 7 and 10 . This did not result in any mixing with other layers.
From 2001 to 2005 systematic excavations were carried out at the upper level of the Humalien, i.e. at layers 7c, 7a, then 6c-2, 6c-1, 6b and 6a. This was headed by the Polish prehistorian Dorota Wojtzak. The excavation area was 26 m². Over 7,000 lithic artifacts were excavated, plus over 100 remains of animals. In 2005, a Swiss group discovered a fossil fragment of a giant camel that was dated 150,000 years ago. It is a previously unknown species of camels , a Camelus moreli . It was discovered along with human artifacts.
In 2006/7 a piece of a human thigh bone and teeth were unearthed, which, however, could not be safely assigned to Neanderthals . If this succeeds, Hummal would be the first site where Neanderthals would have lived in a steppe.
The excavation area was divided into a western and an eastern one. In 2009, in the southern section, the S1 probe was created on an area of 2 m² and was excavated. Not all layers are detectable in all three focal points. Layer 6c is only found in the eastern zone, and layer 6a only in the southern zone. The blade industry of Hummalien, which can be detected in all three zones, is divided into stratified archaeological layers and is clearly located between Yabrudien and Moustérien. Layers 6a and 6b are not undisturbed, which makes some of the archaeological and archaeozoological investigations problematic. Especially since the animal remains were very poorly preserved and the small size of the samples hardly allows any conclusions.
Despite the disturbance of layers 6a and 6b, lithic analyzes were carried out. It is unclear whether the fluctuations in the amounts found between the layers are due to variable population densities or the extent of the excavations themselves. Layers 6b and 6a, with their high concentration of artifacts, indicate repeated visits by people, with no clear boundary between the two layers being detectable.
In layers 7a, 7c and 6c-2, the lower artifact density and the location and preservation of the remains, together with micromorphological observations, indicate short-term stays.
Lithic analysis
The usual way of gaining a blow is direct percussion with a hard hammer, as can be seen at the easily identifiable impact point, the point at which the hammer hit. Some chips were also won with a soft hammer, as evidenced by diffuse blistering, at least at the edges. Unidirectional processing dominates in all layers, but processing was also bidirectional, especially in sand αh and in layers 6c-2 and 7c.
The aim of the processing was elongated plots (blanks), these were between 2 and 16 cm long. On average, the ratio between length and width was only 2.7 to 3. The shapes are very variable between triangular, trapezoidal, flat, narrow, wide, thick or thin.
The majority are arched in shape, but some are more rectangular. Most of the backs are lightly faceted or smooth, some are carefully faceted. Although they were shaped differently, these "blanks" were prismatic or Levallois-like . They seem to be the result of a unified reduction strategy. There are two types, namely semi-rotating and frontal. The faceting was used to taper the core platform. In addition, the surface was processed regularly, mostly by hitting off cuts on a natural or cortical ridge. The first method, machining the thickness of the core , resulted in blades with a fairly high transverse profile and a smooth back. In the process of continued chopping off, one gradually reached the wider and flatter part of the core, at the same time its volume naturally decreased. At this stage of processing, the processors changed their approach and prepared the edge areas of the core intensively. The cores were processed unidirectionally or bidirectionally from one or two parallel platforms. In many cases, the same technique was used again and again on the same (shrinking) core, so that the reductions became smaller as the core from which they were extracted lost volume. Apparently, however, many of the workers switched from this laminar to the levallois-like technique as soon as the core fell below a certain size. In both cases the result was a large number of blades of very different lengths, with the reduction technique by far dominating. Finally, as a third technique, the processing of burin cores and the production of truncated, faceted pieces can be proven. The constant abrasion was evidently based on the result, for which purpose the tee angle was adjusted in accordance with the now changed shape.
With these procedures standardized tees and blades were achieved. Among the retouched pieces, the elongated pieces with a point that had been created under hard blows predominated. Typologically, these are points and convergent bow scrapers (side-scrapers), while the parallel blades, which are retouched on one or both sides, are typologized as one or both-sided bow scrapers or blades. The retouched blades are usually longer and wider than the unmodified ones. Possibly they served other purposes than the thicker tees.
The recycling of blades was an important goal in Hummalien. Existing devices were naturally smaller, often worked on both sides, but broken pieces were also reworked, as well as large splinters. Scratches of the Yabrudien were also converted into cores from which the above-mentioned devices were made. Probably the majority of the devices found went back to this type of recycling. On the one hand, this was an expression of a certain thrift, but above all, changed possible uses of the end products offer an explanation.
literature
- Jean-Marie Le Tensorer , Dorota Wojtzak: The Long Paleolithic Sequence of Hummal (Central Syria) , in: Jeanine Abdul Massih, Shinichi Nishiyama (ed.): Archaeological Explorations in Syria 2000-2011. Proceedings of ISCACH-Beirut 2015 , Oxford 2016, pp. 179-188.
- Dorota Wojtzak: Cores on flakes and bladelet production, a question of recycling? The perspective from the Hummalian industry of Hummal, Central Syria , in: Quaternary International 361 (2015) 155–177. ( academia.edu )
- Thomas C. Hauck: Jardin d'Eden ou exil dans le désert: le Moustérien de Hummal dans son contexte , in: L'Anthropologie 119,5 (2015) 659-675.
- Dorota Wojtzak: The Early Middle Palaeolithic Blade Industry from Hummal, Central Syria , Diss., Basel 2012. ( online , PDF)
- Hani El Suede: A Yabrudian Equid and Upper Cheek Teeth from the Site of Hummal (El Kowm, Syria) , in: Jean-Marie Le Tensorer et al. (Ed.): The Lower and Middle Palaeolithic in the Middle East and neighboring regions . ERAUL 126. Université de Liège, 2011, pp. 262–270.
- Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, Reto Jagher, Philippe Rentzel, Thomas Hauck, Kristin Ismail-Meyer, Christine Pümpin, Dorota Wojtczak: Long-Term Site Formation Processes at the Natural Springs Nadaouiyeh and Hummal in the El Kowm Oasis, Central Syria , in: Geoarchaeology 22 (2007) 621-639.
Remarks
- ↑ Jean Marie Le Tensorer: Regional perspectives of early human populations in Syria: the case of El Kowm , in: Nuria Sanz (Ed.): Human Origin Sites and the World Heritage Convention in Eurasia , Vol. 1, UNESCO Publishing, 2015, Pp. 54–71, here: p. 63.
- ↑ Dorota Wojtczak: Cores on flakes and bladelet production, a question of recycling? The perspective from the Hummalian industry of Hummal, Central Syria , in: Quaternary International (2015) 155-177, here: 156.
- ↑ Dorota Wojtzak: The Early Middle Palaeolithic Blade Industry from Hummal, Central Syria , Diss., Bael 2012, p. 9.
- ^ Jean-Marie Le Tensorer: Hummal . Travaux de la Mission Archéologique Syro-Suisse d'El Kowm, 5 (2000) 14-23.
- ↑ Dorota Wojtczak: Cores on flakes and bladelet production, a question of recycling? The perspective from the Hummalian industry of Hummal, Central Syria , in: Quaternary International (2015) 155-177, here: p. 158.
- ^ Giant camel fossil found in Syria , BBC News, October 10, 2006.
- ↑ Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, Thomas Hauck, Dorota Wojtczak, Peter Schmid, Daniel Schuhmann: Le paléolithique d'El Kowm, Syrie. Résultats de la campagne 2006-2007 , final report, Basel 2007, p. 13.
- ↑ The analysis follows Dorota Wojtzak: The Early Middle Palaeolithic Blade Industry from Hummal, Central Syria , Diss., Basel 2012, pp. 11-14.
- ↑ Dorota Wojtczak: Cores on flakes and bladelet production, a question of recycling? The perspective from the Hummalian industry of Hummal, Central Syria , in: Quaternary International (2015) 155-177.