Abstract
The site of Umm el Tlel (El Kowm Basin, Syria) has revealed an extremely rich stratigraphic sequence, in particular for the Middle Paleolithic, which allows synchronic and diachronic approaches to the analysis of occupation dynamics. Complex VI3 corresponds to a lacustrine phase during which the site was regularly covered by water and sedimentary deposits. Nine archeological layers are present, dating to around 70 ka. The assemblage from layer VI3a has revealed the co-existence of at least two chaînes opératoires of reduction: (a) recurrent Levallois focused on the production of points associated with quadrangular and overshot flakes; (b) recurrent Levallois focused on the production of points, laminar and quadrangular flakes. Other data, such as that related to the remains of hunted fauna recovered in this layer, complement these results and also contribute to a better understanding of the status of the site of Umm el Tlel and, more generally, its role within a broader territory that we can now better define. In a diachronic perspective, occupation dynamics can also be addressed by the study of all of the archeological layers in complex VI3. Based on results of analyses completed, these layers are remarkably uniform throughout this specific geological context, from all perspectives (reduction techniques, hunting strategies and faunal treatment, sites functions, etc.). Thus, the human behaviors revealed by the material recovered from complex VI3, although relatively complex, seem to have been quite stable. This stability, at present difficult to quantify in terms of duration, suggests a degree of rigidity in Mousterian territories where, despite intermittent occupations, human groups regularly returned to the same places to carry out the same range of activities.
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- 1.
Earlier phases are known only from a pit dug by the local population.
- 2.
Only flint has been taken into account here. It is important to emphasize, however, that limestone (equally allochtonous as flint) was also used as a raw material in lesser proportions and for unretouched tools or tools not used for cutting (Torchio 2006 ).
- 3.
The largest nodules of this raw material were observed around Palmyra, 40 km southwest, and in the Euphrates Valley, 80 km north (Al Sakhel 2004: 151, after Boëda, pers. comm.).
- 4.
The definition of Levallois reduction and the terminology employed to characterize it are relatively variable from one publication to the next. The concepts used here are those developed by Boëda (1994, 1995) and the terminology as determined at the round table meeting held in 1990 at Champlitte, Haute-Saône (Collective, unpublished).
- 5.
Flakes produced from the first are always slightly smaller than those from the second.
- 6.
A “3-blow” point has only three dorsal scars: one forming the “basal triangle” typical of all Levallois points and the two others from the lateral edges. For the “constructed” point, one or more of the three elements of a Levallois point (basal triangle and two edges) were made by several removals (Boëda et al. 1998a).
- 7.
For 26 cores, the state of the flaking surface did not permit identification of the method employed.
- 8.
It is important to note that the functional aspect of these assemblages is not addressed in this article. Variation in function and use of the blanks from one stratum to another is entirely possible, but the type of analysis carried out here, focusing uniquely on the production phase of these blanks, does not permit formulation of hypotheses on this subject.
- 9.
Perhaps after having been used to butcher carcasses at the kill site (Boëda et al. 1998a).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge N.J. Conard and J. Richter for having accepted my participation in their symposium of the 150 Years of Neanderthal Discoveries Bonn congress. I also express special thanks to E. Boëda for his very helpful suggestions and, with S. Muhesen and H. Al Sakhel, for access to the lithic material of the stratum VI3a′ of Umm el Tlel. I am grateful to H. Koehler and M. Pagli for reading an improving earlier version of the text.
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Lourdeau, A. (2011). Stability in the Intermittence. In: Conard, N.J., Richter, J. (eds) Neanderthal Lifeways, Subsistence and Technology. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0415-2_16
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