Tag Archive for 'Levant'

Barley (Hordeum vulgare). Image credit: Cliff.

Cereal Domestication May Have Started 10,000 Years Earlier than Scientists Thought

Oct 24, 2017 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, ancient peoples began to systemically affect the evolution...

Model of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. The placement of the burial chamber is marked white. Image credit: Steven J. Plunkett / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Middle Eastern Bitumen Found in Early Medieval Buried Ship in UK

Dec 2, 2016 by News Staff

Bitumen — a rare, tar-like material — from the Middle East is present in the 7th century Anglo-Saxon ship-burial at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, UK,...

Kaizer Hilltop quarry: step-like morphology of the quarrying front on the rocks. Image credit: Gabi Laron.

Israeli Archaeologists Discover 11,000-Year-Old Quarry

Mar 31, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists in Israel say they have uncovered the earliest known Neolithic quarry in the southern Levant. Kaizer Hilltop quarry: step-like morphology...

Left: captive Philistine warriors from a wall relief at Medinet Habu, Egypt, 1185-1152 BC. Right: an artist's conception of a Philistine warrior. Image credit: John Shumate.

Philistines Introduced Cumin, Opium Poppy into Levant, Archaeologists Say

Aug 31, 2015 by News Staff

The Philistines – one of the so-called Sea Peoples, and mentioned in the Bible and other ancient sources – were a seafaring Indo-European people...

Top: map of Natufian sites with narrow and wide conical mortars in the Southern Levant. Bottom, from left to right: (i) almost peeled barley grain subsequent to the third shift of dehusking in the narrow conical mortar; (ii) grinding the dehusked grains to flour by intensive radial motion in a narrow conical mortar with a long wooden pestle; (iii) fine flour and some groats deposited in the adjacent cuphole, subsequent to the first shift of milling. Image credit: Eitam D et al.

Archaeologists Unravel Mystery of Paleolithic Rock-Cut Mortars Found throughout Levant

Aug 27, 2015 by News Staff

Using Paleolithic conical mortars carved into bedrock, a team of experimental archaeologists has reconstructed how the Natufian people – hunter-gatherers...

Two stone tool points made using a prismatic blade technique (left and center), and a bone point or needle (right). The finds give anthropologists a new window onto a transitional time, on the cusp of modern human cultural behaviors. Image credit: Emory University.

45,000-Year-Old Lithic Artifacts Point to Dawn of Social Division of Labor

Jun 15, 2015 by News Staff

Thousands of stone tools crafted 40,000 – 45,000 years ago (early Upper Paleolithic) and unearthed from the recently discovered cave site of Mughr...

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