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Other Archaeological Sites / The Neolithic of the Levant (500 Page Book Online) McDonald Ancient Near East Book Auction Ad Infinitum Wadi Hammeh Hammeh (Site 27) was a hunter and gatherer community who lived in the Jordan Valley 12000 years ago. It is one of the world's oldest village sites. The site lies on the top of a steep-sided ridge within Wadi Hammeh, a tributary of the Jordan River. The archaeological remains are distributed over 2000 square metres but part of the site has been destroyed through erosion. It is estimated that the village originally covered an area of about half a hectare. Approximately 350 square metres of the remaining archaeological deposit have been excavated making it one of three sites of its age to have undergone such extensive excavation. Hammeh (Site 27) was dug with the aim of recovering information about the occupational history and settlement layout of a Natufian village. The Natufians were a cultural group which archaeologists recognise on the basis of their distinctive material culture. They emerged about 13000 years ago in the central Levant and stood at the threshold of a major transformation of human society. Hammeh (Site 27) contains an abundance of debris representing food-remains, tool-making activities, bits of collapsed structures as well as the remains of in situ structures. Unlike later village sites there is little evidence for regular site maintenance: rubbish seems to have accrued within the house structures and not to have been removed. This presents the archaeologist with a daunting amount of material culture to study but also reveals something about what life must have been like in an early village: the floors of the dwellings would have been littered with broken tools, debris from a variety of activities as well as the remains of meals. It was anything but neat and tidy and the stench would have been strong. As hearths were located within the structures it may have been quite smoky inside the dwellings. More than 436000 artefacts were recovered from the excavation of Hammeh (Site 27). Age estimates for the occupation of Hammeh (Site 27) are based on AMS radiocarbon determinations on carbonised seeds. The results of these determinations are as follows:
11,920 + 150 B.P. (OxA-393) Statistical analysis reveals that these age determinations are indistinguishable so it is evident that Hammeh (Site 27) was settled about 12000 years ago. Natufian sites span the time range between 12800 and 10300 years ago so Hammeh (Site 27) is one of a small number of early Natufian sites that has been excavated .....
Journal Article
The Early Epi-Palaeolithic of Wadi Hammeh This article outlines research on a suite of six early Epi-Palaeolithic sites located in Wadi [dry creek bed] Hammeh in the East Jordan Valley in Jordan. The sites are all in situ, stratified and carbon-dated, constituting the only well-developed archaeological sequence in the region for this period. The Wadi Hammeh group contrasts with recently excavated contemporaneous sites in adjacent areas, extending our growing awareness of the cultural complexity of the Early Epi-Palaeolithic period in the Levant ..... The History of the Ancient Near East Electronic Compendium |
