Maadan (archaeological site)

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Coordinates: 35 ° 49 ′ 0 ″  N , 39 ° 25 ′ 0 ″  E

Relief Map: Syria
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Maadan​
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Syria

Maadan is an old Paleolithic site in Syria , near the eponymous village Maadan , which is about 55 km southeast of Raqqa on the eastern border of the governate of the same name. The site, or more precisely two of the five sites, was at times considered the oldest site where the presence of early people 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 , there is no hand ax underneath .

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 on the edge of the plateau overlooking the town of Maadan. Three clusters of such finds could be made out about 2 to 3 km southeast of Maadan. The deposits of the local wadi were designated as Qf III, II and I formation, where “Qf” stands for “Quaternary fluvial”. The finds from Maadan 5 were assigned to the formation Qf III , a designation that in turn refers to the Euphrates river and the geological epoch of the Quaternary . The nearby Maadan 1 was recently assigned to the same formation. Maadan 3 presents a complicated situation because the site was recently also assigned to QF III, where Francis Hours had identified Qf II in it, but Qf-I remains were also named in a Qf "remmant" by Lorraine Copeland . What seems clearer, however, is that layers 4b and 4a, which lie around 65 to 85 m above the Euphrates, are younger than the artifacts of Maadan 1 to 3, which are only 45 to 50 m above the river.

Tuncer Demir and his colleagues assumed that the similar height above the river, which characterizes the Zalabiyeh site , which is about 25 km downstream, allowed the conclusion that Maadan 1 to 3 were formed at the same time. The argument that the artifacts were discovered similarly high above the river, however, loses its relevance because the Euphrates dug into the ground at different speeds and that land uplifts occurred. As a result, sites that are at the same height above the Euphrates do not have to come from the same epoch.

Andrew Douglas Shaw, who excluded this site from his investigation in view of the uncertainties at Maadan 3, assumed that Qf III is older or at least as old as Qf II.But Qf II is assigned to MIS 36, so he took an age of 1 , 20 to 1.17 million years ago. Since Qf III is possibly a little older, Maadan 1 and 3 are among those sites that document the first time hominins stayed outside Africa and also in the Middle East.

Lithic analysis

In Maadan 1 and 5 there were 26 nuclei, of which only one came from Maadan 5. No hand axes were found, but flakes, namely 44 in Maadan 1 and five in Maadan 5. These figures, however, only refer to artifacts from the Damascus National Museum, which can be clearly assigned to one of the two sites.

All artifacts show severe abrasion, which is typical of pronounced fluvial movements. 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 only known point in question on the Euphrates is near the village of Tellik, about 150 km above Maadan. 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 81.4 mm and weigh an average of 335 g. 92.3%. They are to be understood as so-called “migrating platform cores”, as they are characterized by ad hoc discounts. On average, only 1.5 times were processed in order to win a discount, whereby there were 3.9 discounts. When reducing, the cores were never machined for long, because in almost half of the cases they have only 1 to 5 notches, the others up to 10, and only three show more than 10 such machining marks from a hard hammer. The largely preserved cortex also indicates only short processing episodes. Unlike in Rastan , where the starting materials were already quite small and very soon no further reduction was possible, the still quite large cores in Maadan were thrown away early on, despite not reaching this technological limit.

The tees are on average 63.4 mm long, with the smallest only 27.7 mm, the largest being 96.6 mm. The width, on average at 53.0 mm, varies even more. It ranges from 30.3 to 120.8 mm. The thickness also varies between 7.3 and 52.3 mm, but is only 22.8 mm on average. So, according to the usual vocabulary, they are medium-sized and thick. According to Andrew Shaw, this fact may be due to the fluvial movements and the fact that the artifacts were picked up by hand, which means that larger pieces are less likely to be overlooked than smaller ones.

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. 23-27.

Remarks

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ Francis Hours: Le Paléolithique inférieur 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.
  4. ↑ Lorraine Copeland: The Palaeolithic of the Euphrates Valley in Syria , in: Olivier Aurenche, Marie Le Mière, Paul Sanlaville (eds.): From the River to the Sea. The Palaeolithic and the Neolithic on the Euphrates and in the Northern Levant. Studies in honor of Lorraine Copeland , British Archaeological Reports International Series, 1263, Oxford 2004, pp. 19–61, here: p. 26.
  5. ↑ Lorraine Copeland: The Palaeolithic of the Euphrates Valley in Syria , in: Olivier Aurenche, Marie Le Mière, Paul Sanlaville (eds.): From the River to the Sea. The Palaeolithic and the Neolithic on the Euphrates and in the Northern Levant. Studies in honor of Lorraine Copeland , British Archaeological Reports International Series, 1263, Oxford 2004, pp. 19–61, here: p. 29.
  6. ↑ Tuncer Demir, Rob Westaway, David Bridgland, Malcolm Pringle, Sema Yurtmen, Anthony Beck, George Rowbotham: Ar-Ar dating of late Cenozoic basaltic volcanism in northern Syria: Implications for the history of incision by the River Euphrates and uplift in the northern Arabian Platform , in: Tectonics 26 (2007) 1–30, here: p. 14.
  7. ↑ 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. 209 f.
  8. ^ 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, Table 8.2.6, p. 212.