14C Age Calibration

The late Pleistocene expansion of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) into Eurasia and the concurrent demise of the Neanderthals appears to be a complex and regionally variable process. The southern Caucasus region, with its rich cave-sites, has recently provided important results regarding this process. In this paper we report on the results of fieldwork in Bondi Cave, Western Georgia, providing a new radiocarbon chronology, stratigraphic observations, analyses of lithic technology and provenance, faunal and floral remains as well as paleoenvironmental data. The cave includes Middle Palaeolithic (ca, 45,000 ka cal. BP) cultural horizons and a long Upper Palaeolithic sequence (ca. 40,000–27,000 cal. BP from layer V to IV). A modern human tooth was found in layer Vb. We estimate its age at 39,000–35,800 Cal BP (95.4%), based on the Bayesian age model we built. If the context of the tooth is reliable, as we think it is, this would make it the oldest morphologically modern human in the Caucasus. Upper Palaeolithic hunting of tur and bison, as well as the collection of various plants including flax is attested. Mobile Upper Palaeolithic foragers inhabited the cave in generally cold and dry periods, but a mosaic of environments, including forests and meadows, was nonetheless available to them. The archaeological sequence of Bondi and adjacent sites indicates a substantial time gap between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic occupations, thus disproving Neanderthal-AMH interaction in this area and lending support to a replacement scenario in the southern Caucasus, assuming of course that the Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) is related to the arrival of AMHs.

Numerous palaeoenvironmental and archaeological studies from southern Arabia (Yemen and Oman) have revealed strong relations between phases of human settlements and climate change linked to the Indian monsoon system. Analyses on speleothems, cave fills, lacustrine deposits and palaeo-mangroves have shown that during the Early to Mid-Holocene, a humid Optimum culminated around 9000-8000 cal BP. New results on inland speleothems and cave sediments fromthe Jebel Qara (southern Oman) are crucial in our depiction of Early and Mid-Holocene climatic evolution and cultural dynamics of the region. These aspects are discussed here, based on new archaeological surveys, excavations, geoarchaeological and micromorphological studies, aiming to better understand connections with Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene autochthonous cultures of southern Arabia. Our results suggest that the final Pleistocene was marked by strong aridity, which promoted a widespread thermoclastism within rock shelter and deposition of aeolian sand; in contrast, the transition towards the Holocene is marked (since c.12,000 cal BP) by a progressive increasing in environmental humidity, which permitted the formation of thick strata of peridesert loess. After this phase, the environmental humidity of the Jebel increased and permitted the existence of a large community of land snails; the latter were exploited by Early Holocene hunter-gatherers who lived in the rock shelters between c. 10,500e9500 cal BP and left consistent accumulations of land shells (escargotières). The maximum of Holocene humidity was reached between 9000 and 8000 cal BP; regional aquifer were recharged and the deposition of calcareous tufa at the entrance of caves started, lasting up to c. 4500 cal BP. C and O stable isotopes from calcareous tufa highlights, in accordance with several regional records, the progressive decline of the intensity of the Indian Ocean monsoon and the transition towards arid conditions. In this phase, the area was abandoned and archaeological communities possibly relocated along the coast of central and southern Oman, where they exploited the mangrove environment.

Apart from the Balkans and the Anatolian-Iranian highlands, the Southern Levant is one of the centres of early metallurgy, where the smelting of ores was extensively practiced already in the 5th millennium BC. The development of extractive metallurgy is a crucial period in the evolution of human societies, because ore use and processing is not only closely related to technological development but also to social change. Early metal artefacts were regarded as special and prestigious, but also in later prehistory metal goods and metallurgy played an important role in the emergence of social stratification, because of the rarity of raw material sources and technological know-how involved.
The rise of metallurgy in the Southern Levant as well as in Predynastic Egypt is accompanied, to some degree even pioneered, by intensified contact networks and exchange relations between both regions. This is perceivable in a number of parallels in the find material of certain sites in the Levant as well as in the Nile valley. These are hinting at a common metal workshop tradition and reciprocal interaction, e.g. the accessibility and distribution of resources and technological progress. The date of the chronological frame, in which this intensification of exchange networks and increasing importance of metallurgy is embedded into, especially the crucial passage from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age, is still open to question and subject of scientific dispute. Recent research at a site in southern Jordan, Tall Hujayrat al-Ghuzlan, may allow to shed some light on this period and help closing a gap there.
A great breakthrough in the pyrotechnical treatment of metal happens between 5000 and 4500 BC. From then on, not only melting and smelting activity is evident in Anatolia, the Balkan region and the Southern Levant. In the Southern Levant, this tradition is connected with the ‘Ghassulian’ Chalcolithic, where also the earliest finds of cast gold and electrum artefacts in the Near East are reported.
When examining the radiocarbon record of the region closely, it becomes visible that there is a relative large amount of dated samples, both for the Chalcolithic and the following Early Bronze Age. Sites like Horvat Beter, Bi res-Safadi, Teleilat Ghassul or Abu Hamid offer more than 40 14C-datings. These suggest a timespan of about 500 years for the ‘Ghassulian’ (also known as: Ghassul-Beer Sheva culture), beginning around 4500 BC and ending not later than 4000/3900 BC. This causes a chronological dilemma, since the 14C-datings from most secure Early Bronze Age (EBA) contexts have failed to result in dates older than 3600 BC. There are some older dates, but deriving either from pits or other unclear contexts, which are not to be attributed to archaeological events or cultural assemblages.