Amos Frumkin
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 85271 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Amos Frumkin |
| PRENOMES | Amos |
| SOBRENOME | Frumkin |
| ASSINATURA | FRUMKIN A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2028-4210 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 54 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 362 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 54 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1991 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Distinguishing biogenic from geogenic anhydrites in ash
A white layer composed of anhydrite, a calcium sulfate mineral, was identified in an archaeological context within a cave near the Dead Sea, radiocarbon dated to the Iron Age period. Under ambient conditions, anhydrite typically hydrates to gypsum, rendering its retention a notably rare phenomenon in an archaeological setting. This prompted questions regarding both its preservation and origin. Certain plants, such as tamarisk, are known to produc…
Water as a Strategic Resource in the Western Samaria Region – The Unique Case of Deir Sam’an
Maintaining a proper water supply is a subject of constant concern in arid and semi-arid regions of the world, including the Mediterranean Basin and, more specifically, Western Samaria. Solutions such as cisterns, reservoirs, water tunnels, and springs were developed and perfected throughout history to enable a regular supply of water to the local population. The case of Deir Sam’an is particularly interesting, as it seems the site's water storag…
Strategic Water Management in the Fortified Monasteries of Western Samaria as a Tool for Controlling an Agricultural Region
Toward the end of the Roman and the beginning of the Byzantine periods, similar, impressive, fortified structures were built in Western Samaria. During the latter period, these structures began to function as fortified monasteries of martial character, all possessing highly sophisticated water systems that share a common construction plan. This article reviews the water systems of four sites—Deir Sam‘an, Deir Qal‘a, Deir Daqle and Deir el-‘Arab—a…
Water tunnels at Nahal ‘Amal (Israel)
The Mamluks extended their Medieval period control from the water-rich Nile Valley to the dry southern Levant. We try to elucidate the Mamluk way of utilizing water energy for sugar production at the Bet She’an Valley. The studied hewn tunnels served some industrial installation. We dated the tunnels to the Mamluks period, suggesting that they fed water to sugar mills, a particularly dominant industry during this period in the region. The tunnels…
Dating an ancient spring tunnel using archaeological artefacts functioning as nuclei of cave pearls
Cave pearls are spherical concentric speleothems growing radially around nuclei in shallow pools saturated with calcite. They are very rare in the Southern Levant. We present a unique assemblage of 50 cave pearls found in the Iron Age Joweizeh artificial spring tunnel in the Jerusalem Hills of Israel. Some of these deposits represent the first global evidence of formation on archaeological artefacts: pottery sherds and ancient plaster. Multi‐anal…
Death and Depths
Exploring and using remote segments of complex karst systems represents the incorporation of one of the wildest and most demanding natural environments into the cultural fabric of Neolithic-Chalcolithic village-based communities in the Levant. The unique preservation of an early fifth-millennium bce activity phase in Har Sifsof Cave in northern Israel allows for a detailed investigation of an early case of human interaction with the deep undergro…
Evidence from Tinshemet Cave in Israel suggests behavioural uniformity across Homo groups in the Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic circa 130,000-80,000 years ago
The south Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic (mid-MP; ~130-80 thousand years ago (ka)) is remarkable for its exceptional evidence of human morphological variability, with contemporaneous fossils of Homo sapiens and Neanderthal-like hominins. Yet, it remains unclear whether these hominins adhered to discrete behavioural sets or whether regional-scale intergroup interactions could have homogenized mid-MP behaviour. Here we report on our discoveries …
Stratigraphic Setting and Lithology of Mount Scopus Chalk Quarry Cave
This article describes the geological setting of the Mount Scopus chalk-vessel production and quarry cave. This artificial cave was manually quarried in chalk of the middle of Menuḥa Formation, which consists of tiny calcitic skeletons of micro-organisms living in the open sea. Due to its clay content, this rock unit was easier for quarrying, but also caused stability problems and the breakage of stone vessels during manufacture
The Kamon Cave Survey
The archaeological survey of the Kamon cave revealed several groups of finds, including a hoard of coins and jewelry; a cache comprising a lamp with agate beads inside it; several pottery vessels and an arrowhead found together in a rock crevice; and scattered pottery and metal artifacts. Based on the finds, it was concluded that the major period of human activity in the cave was at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, with meager activity du…
Spatio-temporal trends in complex caves use in the later prehistory of the southern Levant
Evolution of water extraction technology (spring tunnels) in the Southern Levant during the last three millennia
A spring tunnel is an ancient water installation used to artificially increase the water yield of a spring through a subterranean tunnel. We have developed a database of 216 spring tunnels documented in the central region of the Southern Levant (present‐day Israel), constructed between Iron Age II and the modern era. The study focuses on the evolution of this water installation over a period of 2500 years, examining these constructions from techn…
Mitigating Water Scarcity in the Medieval and Islamic Periods
During the intermediate Islamic period, the settlement of Safed was transformed from a small unknown village in Upper Galilee to an important stronghold and administrative center, aggravating the problem of the town’s water supply. Lacking natural springs, Safed depended on cisterns fed by gutters that channeled seasonal rainwater from the roofs and on distant springs in the Nahal Amud ravine. As the town’s population grew, its rulers were requir…
Biogeography of living fossils as a key for geological reconstruction of the East Mediterranean
The early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site at Nesher-Ramla Quarry, Israel
Formation processes and spatial patterning in a late prehistoric complex cave in northern Israel informed by SLAM-based LiDAR
The micromammal fauna of the southern Levant changed with the paleoclimate during the Paleolithic, while modern humans persisted
Ancient Spring Tunnels of Jerusalem, Israel
About 210 spring tunnels were developed in Israel, most of them within its central mountain range and especially in the Jerusalem Hills. This phenomenon probably first appeared in Israel during Iron Age II, around the 8th century BCE. Spring tunnels are associated with the development of irrigated agricultural systems, landscape design and the establishment of rural settlements. This study presents for the first time a comprehensive statistical p…
The Shaft Tunnel of the Biar aqueduct of Jerusalem
The Biar aqueduct is the most sophisticated of the aqueducts supplying water to Jerusalem during classical periods. It includes the Biar spring, an underground Shaft Tunnel ∼3 km long harvesting groundwater (cuniculus), a dam, a surface channel, and a tunnel traversing a ridge. We conducted a survey of the Biar underground Shaft Tunnel, mapping all of its accessible parts (∼1200 m), facilitating a new understanding of the cutting‐edge hydrogeolog…
Rediscovering Geula Cave
The last glacial cycle of the southern Levant
Karst terrain in the western upper Galilee, Israel
Issues of theory and method in the analysis of Paleolithic mortuary behavior
Mortuary behavior (activities concerning dead conspecifics) is one of many traits that were previously widely considered to have been uniquely human, but on which perspectives have changed markedly in recent years. Theoretical approaches to hominin mortuary activity and its evolution have undergone major revision, and advances in diverse archeological and paleoanthropological methods have brought new ways of identifying behaviors such as intentio…
The earliest modern humans outside Africa
Earliest modern humans out of Africa Recent paleoanthropological studies have suggested that modern humans migrated from Africa as early as the beginning of the Late Pleistocene, 120,000 years ago. Hershkovitz et al. now suggest that early modern humans were already present outside of Africa more than 55,000 years earlier (see the Perspective by Stringer and Galway-Witham). During excavations of sediments at Mount Carmel, Israel, they found a fos…
Distancing the Dead
The Late Chalcolithic of the southern Levant (ca. 4500–3800 b.c.e.) is known for its extensive use of the subterranean sphere for mortuary practices. Numerous natural and hewn caves, constituting formal extramural cemeteries, were used as secondary burial localities for multiple individuals, refecting and reaffirming social order and/or communal identity and ideology. Recently, two large complex caves located in the northern Negev Highlands, sout…
Radiocarbon chronology of Manot Cave, Israel and Upper Paleolithic dispersals
Manot Cave radiocarbon dates establish Levantine chronology, which is critical for understanding Upper Paleolithic dispersals.
Evidence for habitual use of fire at the end of the Lower Paleolithic
A series of Mousterian occupations in a new type of site
Possible paleohydrologic and paleoclimatic effects on hominin migration and occupation of the Levantine Middle Paleolithic☆
Emanuel Cave (Israel)
A series of short successive occupations were revealed at the new Middle Paleolithic site of Emanuel Cave. A date of 191± 1 Ka (U/ Th) is suggested as a terminus post quem for the archaeological deposits. Despite the ephemeral nature of the site, the lithic assemblage displays two distinct facies ; the lower layers with a predominantly laminar nature and the upper layers, reflecting more use of the Levallois technology. Techno-typological compari…
The Holocene climatic record of the salt caves of Mount Sedom Israel
Mount Sedom is a salt diapir, on the southwestern shore of the Dead Sea, which has been rising above the local base level throughout the Holocene. Karst development within the salt body has kept pace with the rise forming subhorizontal cave passages with vertical shafts. Wood fragments found embedded in flood sediments that were deposited in the cave passages yielded 14C ages ranging from c. 7100 to 200 BP. A palaeoclimatic sequence was construct…
Karst terrain in the western upper Galilee, Israel
Rediscovering Geula Cave
Radiocarbon Chronology of the Holocene Dead Sea
Holocene sedimentary and geomorphic sequences from the Dead Sea region, Israel, are compared by correlation of more than 50 radiocarbon dates. The 14 C dates provided the chronological basis that enabled us to detect basin-scale events that are hard to ascertain in single-site records. This paper is the first attempt to compare different Holocene records from several sites along the Dead Sea, based on their chrono-stratigraphy. Included is the fi…
The last glacial cycle of the southern Levant
In-situ dating of ancient quarries and the source of flowstone (‘calcite-alabaster’) artifacts in the southern Levant
Tunnel engineering in the Iron Age
A Holocene millennial-scale climatic cycle from a speleothem in Nahal Qanah Cave, Israel
Nahal Qanah Cave, located in the east Mediterranean region, has been inhabited by humans during several periods of the Holocene. These well-dated cultures are used here to establish the age of a speleothem growing over archaeological remains. d 18 O and d 13 C from a stalagmite through the last 6000 years display a 1000–2000-year cycle. Depleted d 18 O and d 13 C value correlate well with high Dead Sea levels and increased arboreal pollen, sugges…
Archaeological remains of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Te'omim Cave ( Mŭghâret Umm et Tûeimîn ), Western Jerusalem Hills
The Te'omim Cave is a large natural cave, located in the Jerusalem hills. The article presents the results of an archaeological survey in the hard-to-reach section of the cave. Archaeological finds, as hoards of coins, weapons, fragmentary human bones, pottery and oil lamps from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt were discovered in situ . The finds attest that the cave served as the last place of refuge for rebels who met there their death. The hi…
Water as a Strategic Resource in the Western Samaria Region – The Unique Case of Deir Sam’an
Maintaining a proper water supply is a subject of constant concern in arid and semi-arid regions of the world, including the Mediterranean Basin and, more specifically, Western Samaria. Solutions such as cisterns, reservoirs, water tunnels, and springs were developed and perfected throughout history to enable a regular supply of water to the local population. The case of Deir Sam’an is particularly interesting, as it seems the site's water storag…
Evolution of water extraction technology (spring tunnels) in the Southern Levant during the last three millennia
A spring tunnel is an ancient water installation used to artificially increase the water yield of a spring through a subterranean tunnel. We have developed a database of 216 spring tunnels documented in the central region of the Southern Levant (present‐day Israel), constructed between Iron Age II and the modern era. The study focuses on the evolution of this water installation over a period of 2500 years, examining these constructions from techn…
Ancient Spring Tunnels of Jerusalem, Israel
About 210 spring tunnels were developed in Israel, most of them within its central mountain range and especially in the Jerusalem Hills. This phenomenon probably first appeared in Israel during Iron Age II, around the 8th century BCE. Spring tunnels are associated with the development of irrigated agricultural systems, landscape design and the establishment of rural settlements. This study presents for the first time a comprehensive statistical p…
The Shaft Tunnel of the Biar aqueduct of Jerusalem
The Biar aqueduct is the most sophisticated of the aqueducts supplying water to Jerusalem during classical periods. It includes the Biar spring, an underground Shaft Tunnel ∼3 km long harvesting groundwater (cuniculus), a dam, a surface channel, and a tunnel traversing a ridge. We conducted a survey of the Biar underground Shaft Tunnel, mapping all of its accessible parts (∼1200 m), facilitating a new understanding of the cutting‐edge hydrogeolog…
Evidence from Tinshemet Cave in Israel suggests behavioural uniformity across Homo groups in the Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic circa 130,000-80,000 years ago
The south Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic (mid-MP; ~130-80 thousand years ago (ka)) is remarkable for its exceptional evidence of human morphological variability, with contemporaneous fossils of Homo sapiens and Neanderthal-like hominins. Yet, it remains unclear whether these hominins adhered to discrete behavioural sets or whether regional-scale intergroup interactions could have homogenized mid-MP behaviour. Here we report on our discoveries …
Spatio-temporal trends in complex caves use in the later prehistory of the southern Levant
Finds from the Bar Kokhba Revolt from Two Caves at En Gedi
Finds from two caves that were excavated in Ein Gedi in 2002 are described. Eleven bronze coins of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, twelve arrowheads and fragments of two papyrus documents were recovered in the Har Yishay Cave, located along the northern slopes of Nahal David. A hoard of nine silver coins, including a Bar-Kokhba tetradrachm, were found in the Sabar Cave. This is the second Bar-Kokhba tetradrachm to have been found in the context of a scien…
The Holocene climatic record of the salt caves of Mount Sedom Israel
Mount Sedom is a salt diapir, on the southwestern shore of the Dead Sea, which has been rising above the local base level throughout the Holocene. Karst development within the salt body has kept pace with the rise forming subhorizontal cave passages with vertical shafts. Wood fragments found embedded in flood sediments that were deposited in the cave passages yielded 14C ages ranging from c. 7100 to 200 BP. A palaeoclimatic sequence was construct…
Determining the Exposure Age of a Karst Landscape
An extensive salt karst system has developed in Mount Sedom salt diapir, Israel, during the Holocene. Multilevel vadose caves were 14 C dated using wood fragments embedded in alluvial deposits. The oldest date of each cave is used to constrain the age of the salt exposure. The upper portion of the southeastern escarpment was the first to rise above base level ∼7100 yr B.P. Caves in the surrounding area indicate gradual landscape exposure around t…
Continental Oxygen Isotopic Record of the Last 170,000 Years in Jerusalem
A long radiometrically dated oxygen isotopic record of continental climatic variations since the penultimate glaciation was obtained from a stalagmite deposited in a sealed cave in Jerusalem. This record shows that speleothems have the potential of assigning dates to long- and short-term climatic events, with possible refining of Milankovitch tuning of ice and marine records which themselves are not datable. Short-term (∼1000-yr) events are very …
A Holocene millennial-scale climatic cycle from a speleothem in Nahal Qanah Cave, Israel
Nahal Qanah Cave, located in the east Mediterranean region, has been inhabited by humans during several periods of the Holocene. These well-dated cultures are used here to establish the age of a speleothem growing over archaeological remains. d 18 O and d 13 C from a stalagmite through the last 6000 years display a 1000–2000-year cycle. Depleted d 18 O and d 13 C value correlate well with high Dead Sea levels and increased arboreal pollen, sugges…
Radiocarbon Chronology of the Holocene Dead Sea
Holocene sedimentary and geomorphic sequences from the Dead Sea region, Israel, are compared by correlation of more than 50 radiocarbon dates. The 14 C dates provided the chronological basis that enabled us to detect basin-scale events that are hard to ascertain in single-site records. This paper is the first attempt to compare different Holocene records from several sites along the Dead Sea, based on their chrono-stratigraphy. Included is the fi…
Historic Dead Sea Level Fluctuations Calibrated with Geological and Archaeological Evidence
The Dead Sea, the Holocene terminal lake of the Jordan River catchment, has fluctuated during its history in response to climatic change. Biblical records, calibrated by radiocarbon-dated geological and archaeological evidence, reinforce and add detail to the chronology of the lake-level fluctuations. There are three historically documented phases of the Dead Sea in the Biblical record: low lake levels ca. 2000–1500 B.C.E. (before common era); hi…
Paleoclimate reconstruction based on the timing of speleothem growth and oxygen and carbon isotope composition in a cave located in the rain shadow in Israel
High-resolution 230 Th/ 234 U ages and δ 18 O and δ 13 C compositions of speleothems in Ma’ale Efrayim Cave located to the east of the central mountain ridge of Israel enable us to examine the nature of the rain shadow aridity during glacial and interglacial intervals. Speleothem growth occurred during marine glacial isotopic periods, with no growth during the two last marine isotope interglacial intervals and during the peak of the Last Glacial …
Uranium series dates from Qesem Cave, Israel, and the end of the Lower Palaeolithic
Tunnel engineering in the Iron Age
Late Quaternary environmental and human Events at En Gedi, reflected by the geology and archaeology of the Moringa Cave (Dead Sea area, Israel)
The Moringa Cave within Pleistocene sediments in the En Gedi area of the Dead Sea Fault Escarpment contains a sequence of various Pleistocene lacustrine deposits associated with higher-than-today lake levels at the Dead Sea basin. In addition it contains Chalcolithic remains and 5th century BC burials attributed to the Persian period, cemented and covered by Late Holocene travertine flowstone. These deposits represent a chain of Late Pleistocene …
Desert speleothems reveal climatic window for African exodus of early modern humans
One of the first movements of early modern humans out of Africa occurred 130-100 thousand years ago (ka), when they migrated northward to the Levant region. The climatic conditions that accompanied this migration are still under debate. Using high-precision multicollector-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) U-Th methods, we dated carbonate cave deposits (speleothems) from the central and southern Negev Desert of Israel, locat…
Finds from the Bar Kokhba Revolt from Two Caves at En Gedi
Finds from two caves that were excavated in Ein Gedi in 2002 are described. Eleven bronze coins of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, twelve arrowheads and fragments of two papyrus documents were recovered in the Har Yishay Cave, located along the northern slopes of Nahal David. A hoard of nine silver coins, including a Bar-Kokhba tetradrachm, were found in the Sabar Cave. This is the second Bar-Kokhba tetradrachm to have been found in the context of a scien…
Evidence for habitual use of fire at the end of the Lower Paleolithic
Paleoenvironment of Jawa basalt plateau, Jordan, inferred from calcite speleothems from a lava tube
This paper explores the environmental conditions that faced the people of ancient Jawa during the Holocene, as well as previous prehistoric periods of the mid-late Pleistocene. Calcite speleothems in a lava tube are dated using the U-Th method, to marine oxygen isotope stage 7 from ∼ 250 to 240 ka and from ∼ 230 to ∼ 220 ka; and the stage 5/4 transition between ∼ 80 and 70 ka. The available evidence indicates general aridity of the Black Desert d…
Stable isotopes of a subfossil Tamarix tree from the Dead Sea region, Israel, and their implications for the Intermediate Bronze Age environmental crisis
Trees growing on the Mt. Sedom salt diapir, at the southern Dead Sea shore, were swept by runoff into salt caves and subsequently deposited therein, sheltered from surface weathering. A subfossil Tamarix tree trunk, found in a remote section of Sedom Cave is radiocarbon dated to between ∼ 2265 and 1930 BCE. It was sampled in 109 points across the tree rings for carbon and nitrogen isotopes. The Sedom Tamarix demonstrates a few hundred years of 13…
The chronology of the late Lower Paleolithic in the Levant based on U–Th ages of speleothems from Qesem Cave, Israel
The Why, How, and When of the Siloam Tunnel Reevaluated
In a recent article in this journal, geologists Amihai Sneh, Ram Weinberger, and Eyal Shalev proposed a new model for the why, how, and when of the Iron Age II Siloam Tunnel in ancient Jerusalem. Here we focus on the how of their contribution. Offered without presentation of new data or discussion of recently published evidence, their model is a refinement of ideas introduced since the early 20th century, mostly by scholars who had little geologi…
Possible paleohydrologic and paleoclimatic effects on hominin migration and occupation of the Levantine Middle Paleolithic☆
Archaeological remains of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Te'omim Cave ( Mŭghâret Umm et Tûeimîn ), Western Jerusalem Hills
The Te'omim Cave is a large natural cave, located in the Jerusalem hills. The article presents the results of an archaeological survey in the hard-to-reach section of the cave. Archaeological finds, as hoards of coins, weapons, fragmentary human bones, pottery and oil lamps from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt were discovered in situ . The finds attest that the cave served as the last place of refuge for rebels who met there their death. The hi…
New Prehistoric Cave Sites in Lower Nahal Oren, Mt. Carmel, Israel
DANI NADEL, NURIT SHTOBER ZISU, AMOS FRUMKIN, ALLA YAROSHEVICH, דני נדל, נורית שטובר זיסו, עמוס פרומקין, אלה ירושביץ, אתרי מערות פרהיסטוריות חדשים בנחל אורן ובהר הכרמל, ישראל / New Prehistoric Cave Sites in Lower Nahal Oren, Mt. Carmel, Israel, Mitekufat Haeven: Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society / מתקופת האבן, כרך מ"ב (תשע"ג, 2012), pp. 75-114
Late Quaternary palaeoclimate of the southern Levant from stromatolites and speleothems of the Dead Sea region
Emanuel Cave (Israel)
A series of short successive occupations were revealed at the new Middle Paleolithic site of Emanuel Cave. A date of 191± 1 Ka (U/ Th) is suggested as a terminus post quem for the archaeological deposits. Despite the ephemeral nature of the site, the lithic assemblage displays two distinct facies ; the lower layers with a predominantly laminar nature and the upper layers, reflecting more use of the Levallois technology. Techno-typological compari…
In-situ dating of ancient quarries and the source of flowstone (‘calcite-alabaster’) artifacts in the southern Levant
Unraveling rift margin evolution and escarpment development ages along the Dead Sea fault using cosmogenic burial ages
The Dead Sea fault (DSF) is one of the most active plate boundaries in the world. Understanding the Quaternary history and sediments of the DSF requires investigation into the Neogene development of this plate boundary. DSF lateral motion preceded significant extension and rift morphology by ~10 Ma. Sediments of the Sedom Formation, dated here between 5.0 ± 0.5 Ma and 6.2 −2.1 + inf Ma, yielded extremely low 10 Be concentrations and 26 Al is abse…
A series of Mousterian occupations in a new type of site
Archaeology (46 obras) · Geography (46 obras) · Cave (36 obras) · Geology (28 obras) · Paleontology (22 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (21 obras) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (21 obras) · Geology (20 obras) · Paleontology (20 obras) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (20 obras)