With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Deborah I. Olszewski and Maysoon al-Nahar will lead an international team on a three-year project investigating late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer adaptations in the Jordanian Western Highlands (Transjordanian Plateau). During this period, changes in behavioral strategies used to exploit landscape resources led to long-term processes that resulted in one of the key economic transitions in prehistory, the origins of agriculture, which in turn fueled the development of civilizations and state-based societies. This Western Highlands project focuses on Early Epipaleolithic (ca. 25,000 to 18,000 calibrated years BP) hunter-gatherer strategies during a period of major climatic change, including the Last Glacial Maximum and a climatic amelioration, all of which impacted plant and animal communities. Previous research at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee, which dates to the Last Glacial Maximum, documented extensive use of wild cereals (barley). What is not clear, however, is the extent to which intensive use of wild cereals was a strategic economic pattern for these groups across the region and whether this strategy persisted through time or was reintroduced just prior to the onset of food production economies.
Much of the Jordanian landscape is currently under-explored from this perspective. To this end, the Western Highlands project will investigate three sites that are situated in different ecological zones - Mediterranean forest, Irano-Turanian steppe, and open parkland - covering the Late Glacial Maximum and the succeeding climatic rebound. Specific tasks include 1) mapping sites with a Total Station; 2) point proveniencing all cultural materials (stone artifacts, fauna, shell, etc.) and samples recovered during excavations with the Total Station for accurate locations and to examine site taphonomy; 3) specialist analysis of fauna and samples for pollen, phytoliths, macrobotanical remains, radiocarbon dating, and geoarchaeology, which will yield data on subsistence, chronology, and landscape use; 4) field analyzing stone artifacts which will inform about site activities and mobility; 5) labeling and properly curating all cultural materials; and, 6) storing all project data, including images, in databases, as well as making this information available on a project website which will include a public-oriented component (including a section in Arabic). Understanding Early Epipaleolithic decisions and strategy options regarding food resource use in different habitats is the primary intellectual merit of this project and a crucial step that will provide new and important data relevant to how hunter-gatherer settlement and subsistence strategies are modified in the face of climatic and paleoenvironmental changes, leading to more informed insight into how domestication economies may have originated.
In terms of its broader impacts, the Western Highlands project is designed as an international partnership between Jordanian and non-Jordanian (U.S., France, Croatia, U.K.) participants at all levels from the Principal Investigators to the student members. In particular, each Jordanian student will be paired with a non-Jordanian student; this will facilitate learning different archaeological methods from each other, as well as result in enhanced cultural understanding. All student participants will be trained in Total Station use, lithic analysis, excavation techniques, and Jordanian prehistory prior to the advent of agriculture. Additionally, the PIs and specialists will offer opportunities for students to use the project materials for theses, and encourage the students to collaborate as co-authors on project publications.
