Tag Archive for 'Natufian culture'

A butterfly clay bead from the Final Natufian period in Eynan-Mallaha, the Upper Jordan Valley, colored red with ochre and marked with the fingerprints of the child (around 10 years old) who modeled it 12,000 years ago. Image credit: Laurent Davin.

Long Before Pottery, Children Shaped Clay to Tell Stories

Mar 19, 2026 by News Staff

A cache of 142 beads and pendants from five Natufian (15,000 to 11,650 years before the present) sites in Israel reveals that clay was first used not for...

3D analysis of the perforated pebbles and the perforations. Image credit: T. Yashuv & L. Grosman, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312007.

12,000-Year-Old Spindle Whorls Unearthed in Israel

Nov 15, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have examined an exceptional assemblage of over a hundred perforated pebbles from the 12,000-year-old Natufian village of Nahal Ein-Gev...

The 12,000-year-old sound-making instruments from Eynan-Mallaha, Israel. Image credit: Davin et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-35700-9.

12,000-Year-Old Flutes Unearthed in Israel

Jun 9, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have found seven flutes made of perforated bird bones at the Natufian site of Eynan-Mallaha in northern Israel. These instruments were intentionally...

(A) the location of Raqefet Cave and three additional Natufian sites in Mt. Carmel, Israel; (B) field photos of the studied boulder mortars (BM 1, 2) and the location of BM3 on the cave floor; scale bar and arrow - 20 cm; (C) a functional reconstruction of the mortars: a boulder mortar used to store plants in a basket with a stone slab on top, and a bedrock mortar used for pounding and cooking plants and brewing beer. Image credit: Dror Maayan / Anat Regev-Gisis.

13,000-Year-Old Brewery Found in Israel

Sep 17, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of researchers from Stanford University and the University of Haifa has found the oldest archaeological evidence of cereal-based...

One of the stone structures of the Shubayqa 1 site, Jordan; the fireplace, where the bread was found, is in the middle. Image credit: Alexis Pantos.

Flatbread Baked 14,400 Years Ago Found in Jordan

Jul 17, 2018 by News Staff

Archaeologists from the Universities of Copenhagen and Cambridge, and University College London have unearthed the charred remains of a flatbread baked...

Remains of a Natufian building at NEG II: the wall of this structure is 90 cm high and is the best preserved wall excavated thus far; it is composed of 5 courses of limestone and basalt stones; the wall tilts slightly away from the structure to the northwest and two large stones mark its base at the top of the Natufian occupation level; only the western side of the structure survived, yet the contour of the curve suggests a diameter of at least 5 m. Image credit: Grosman L. et al.

12,000-Year-Old Natufian Village Unearthed in Jordan Valley

Feb 18, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists excavating the Nahal Ein Gev II site in the Jordan Valley, Israel, have discovered the remains of an ancient settlement of the Natufian...