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37 - Survey and Excavation of Stone Age Sites in Jordan's Wadi al-Hasa: 1979–2012

from Part III: - Archaeology of Human Evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Yehouda Enzel
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Beginning in the late 1970s, Burton MacDonald’s Wadi Hasa Survey (1979-1983) identified dozens of sites in the highlands of west-central Jordan ranging from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Pre-pottery Neolithic. Although most were deflated surface scatters, Middle, Upper and Epipaleolithic open and rockshelter sites in the eastern end of the drainage associated with palaeolake Hasa preserved stratigraphy and faunas rarely found in the region. Between 1984 and 1993 Clark initiated a series of surveys and excavations at these and other, newly-discovered sites that led, in turn, to additional research on the early Upper Palaeolithic. Work continues at Ain Difla, a Mousterian rockshelter in the Wadi Ali. Here we summarize what we have learned from >30 years of research on late Pleistocene forager adaptations to the highlands of west-central Jordan.
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Quaternary of the Levant
Environments, Climate Change, and Humans
, pp. 315 - 328
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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