Changing Settlement Organization in the Late Pleistocene of the Wadi al-Hasa, West-Central Jordan

Bibliographic Data

ID19579502
AuthorsMichael Neeley (0000-0002-2183-2979, Montana State University, corresponding author), Geoffrey A Clark (0000-0003-0161-8438, Arizona State University)
Year2024
Volume7
Issue1
Publication date2024-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Paleolithic Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2520-8217 • E-ISSN: 2520-8217
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s41982-024-00174-2
OpenAlexW4393391590
LanguageEN
References cited77

Since the 1980s, surveys in Jordan’s Wadi al-Hasa document dozens of Late Pleistocene hunter–gatherer sites, some of them tested or partly excavated. To track landscape-scale forager mobility and settlement patterns over time, we examine 26 levels from 13 sites dated to the Middle, Upper, and Epipaleolithic using aspects of Barton’s whole assemblage behavioral indicators research protocol, a collection of methods designed to extract patterns from archeological palimpsests. Because forager ethnographies document adaptive strategies that do not map onto the discrete site types employed by archeologists, we evaluate the utility of the latter so far as behavioral inferences are concerned. We show that discrete bimodal contrasts like “curated” and “expedient” and their archeological correlates fail to capture the much more complex reality. Only by using these methods in conjunction with these analytical contrasts can a realistic picture of forager mobility and land use approximating that known from ethnography be attained

Ancient history · Archaeology · Geography · Pleistocene · Wadi · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Historical Studies · History · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Geology