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Measurements of the JRD bone hooks by layer. Context Length (mm) Width (mm) Gape (mm) Bite (mm) Angle (deg.) Bend cs y (mm) Bend cs z (mm) Bend cs y/z Bend size (mm)
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Nineteen broken and complete bone fish hooks and six grooved stones recovered from the Epipaleolithic site of Jordan River Dureijat in the Hula Valley of Israel represent the largest collection of fishing technology from the Epipaleolithic and Paleolithic periods. Although Jor-dan River Dureijat was occupied throughout the Epipaleolithic (~20-10 ky...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... in bend size. Finally, high variability in the point angle is observed both within and among the layers (Table 2). ...Context 2
... a single hook (#1) has an inner point barb, similar to the pointed barbs typical of the majority of contemporary hooks. The other three hooks (#1, 2 and 3; Figs 3 and 4; Table 2) have outer bite barbs (lower point barbs according to [78] located on the frontal part of the bend (point), just under the tip. Hook #1 has both an inner point and an outer bite barb, while the outer point barb on hook #5 is located at the middle of the point. ...Context 3
... a variety of other solutions to ensure a strong line connection are documented at JRD. These include grooves, single or double knobs on the hook shafts or a combination thereof ( Table 2). The wear traces left on the shank of the hook by the lines (Fig 7M, 8C and 8D), and the location of the knobs on some hooks (e.g., hook #1) indicate that the line connection covered a large part of the shank. ...Context 4
... layers at JRD are rich with evidence for fishing including fish bones, notched limestone pebbles identified as net sinkers, basalt cobbles of similar size that may have served the same purpose and a unique flint tool assemblage rich in burins and scrapers, that may also have been used for fishing and fish processing activities. Despite this, apart from the featureless hook #13, which deviates from all other hooks in its size and morphology (Figs 3 and 4; Table 2), all hooks originate from the two later Natufian layers of the site (Layers 3a and 3b) or the contact between Layer 3a and the Early Neolithic Layer 3-0. This pattern is supported by other south Levantine sites where fish hooks do not appear until the Natufian. ...Citations
... This interpretation, of course, is elaborated with their contextual information and associated finds. Moreover, others also interpreted the practical use of grooved stones as a weight stone or sinker (Pedergnana et al., 2021). In the Near Eastern region, grooved stones are associated with producing and maintaining small-pointed tools such as bone awls (Usacheva, 2016). ...
Ground stone tools, especially perforated stone disks and grooved stones, are rarely discussed in Indonesian prehistory. In terms of its quantity and workmanship, these types of artifacts are fairly unique. They are often limited in quantity, which makes it difficult to compare with the other references. Moreover, their technological aspect still needs to be widely understood by academics. For the first time in Indonesia, this article will discuss perforated stone disks and grooved stones in the context of prehistoric cave sites in Sumatra. Through formal analysis of its attributes at medium to high magnification, we provide a reference for their technological aspects as well as the context of the artifact. Our study reveals that both types of artifacts appear to be closely related to the aquatic culture. The practical function of these artifacts is associated with a fishery tradition on the rivers inland. Our argument is corroborated by the remnants of aquatic fauna associated with these two types of artifacts. Apart from that, the perforated stone disks that were previously reported were found in the mainland of Southeast Asia and, in fact, also found in Sumatra. It further emphasizes the connection between the cultural entities of prehistoric populations that inhabited insular and mainland Southeast Asia.
... Site surveys and preliminary excavations were carried out in 2002 and 2014 (Marder et al. 2015), followed by comprehensive excavations each summer from 2015 to 2021, with a hiatus related to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic during the summer of 2020 (Sharon et al. 2020). Excavation at JRD exposed a rich assemblage of bone and stone tools, of which fishing equipment is among the most significant finds (Sharon et al. 2020;Pedergnana et al. 2021). This site documents almost the entire Epipaleolithic of the Levant and, in particular, three of its most prominent lithic traditions: the Masraqan, Natufian, and Geometric Kebaran (Sharon et al. 2020). ...
... The JRD site comprises multiple open-air excavation areas, of which the largest and most extensively excavated is known as Area B ( Fig. 2; c. 36 m 2 ). Here, the preservation of stone and bone artifacts document repeated visits to this site throughout the terminal Pleistocene (Sharon et al. 2020;Pedergnana et al. 2021). The archeological stratigraphy of the site has been described previously and includes seven artifact-bearing layers (Sharon et al. 2020). ...
... Many of these layers can be traced throughout the site, while some are present in only a limited spatial extent (Sharon et al. 2020). Due to the water-logged nature of the site, botanical and microfaunal remains including pollen, bones and plant macrofossils are well-preserved in the site's sediments (Sharon et al. 2020;Pedergnana et al. 2021;Langgut et al. 2021). ...
Sedimentary records of environmental conditions retrieved from archeological sites provide valuable insight into the milieux of ancient humans and context to understand societal and cultural changes. At Jordan River Dureijat, an open-air site in Israel’s Hula Valley documenting the entire Epipaleolithic period as well as the Early Neolithic, sediments exposed on the walls of the excavation pit reveal a sequence of lacustrine deposits accumulated continuously between c. 21.1 and 11.3 cal ka BP near the southeast margin of Paleolake Hula. Through sediment-grain-size, geochemical, and paleontological analyses, we describe the nature of the Paleolake Hula from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the start of the Holocene. Until c. 17.2 cal ka BP, Paleolake Hula existed as a relatively large and well-buffered waterbody. A rapid and substantial drawdown of the lake occurred at 17.2 cal ka BP, followed by more frequent changes in the position of the shoreline in a smaller and shallower lake, resulting in the deposition of alternating near-shore and deeper lacustrine facies. Since the LGM, seven beds of structureless, silty sediments preserve archeological artifacts belonging to three Epipaleolithic cultures as well as the Early Neolithic pre-pottery Neolithic A culture. These sediments were deposited during phases of low lake level during which times humans waded into the shallow part of the lake, leaving behind stone and bone tools such as bladelets, lunates and burins, fishing hooks, line weights and net sinkers. Using radiocarbon-dated charcoal and a Bayesian statistical model, we produced a chronostratigraphic model for the archeological site, which enables the comparison of proxy paleoclimate records produced from this site’s sediments with regional archives as well as with global trends and changes in the Northern Hemisphere climate. Periods of low lake stands are correlated with the end of the LGM, Heinrich Event 1, and the beginning of the Younger Dryas Stadial. High water stands occurred contemporaneously with the peak of the LGM and during the Bølling–Allerød interstadial. This new water-level record from Lake Hula confirms that lake-level changes here broadly paralleled those of the Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee during the late Pleistocene, highlighting the importance of northern water sources to the overall water balance of the lakes along the Dead Sea Transform.
... In the Levant, well-designed bone fishhooks appeared for the first time at ca. 15,000-11,700 cal BP, associated with the Natufian culture of the Epipalaeolithic (Boyd, 2012, p. 359;Campana, 1989, pp. 101-102;Marder et al., 2013;Nadel et al., 2008Nadel et al., , 2012Pedergnana et al., 2021;Valla et al., 2004). ...
... Bar-Yosef Mayer & Zohar, 2010), material culture (e.g. Bar-Yosef, 1998;Campana, 1989;Pedergnana et al., 2021;Rosenberg et al., 2016) and even artistic representations (Belfer-Cohen, 1991, p. 578, fig. 9). ...
... All of these locations constitute ecological niches with diverse and at least in some cases stable aquatic fauna during the later parts of the Epipalaeolithic (see e.g. Bar-Yosef Mayer & Zohar, 2010;Borvon et al., 2018;Munro et al., 2021;Pedergnana et al., 2021), which in turn provide reliable and beneficial food sources. ...
... The variable morpho-structural properties of the raw materials constrain the technical possibilities to exploit them. Identifying the species of the skeletal raw material is critical to gain insights into how this selection fits into a given environment and cultural system and to understand how these populations exploited their environment (economic aspects), how they saw themselves within this environment (social and symbolic aspects) and how they transformed it (technological aspects) (Bradfield et al., 2021;Langley et al., 2020;Pedergnana et al., 2021;Sidéra, 2000;Tejero et al., 2018Tejero et al., , 2021. ...
Internal and external bony tissues from diverse mammalian taxa are one of the primary animal raw materials exploited for technical and symbolic purposes by Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. Identifying the source species used for osseous raw material is critical to gain insights into these populations' behaviour, technology, and subsistence. The study of osseous tools has advanced in the last few years by combining archaeological and biomolecular methods. Ancient genomics opens many new analytical opportunities. Ancient DNA (aDNA) can provide a wealth of information about the animal sources of these objects. Unfortunately, aDNA analyses often involve destructive sampling. Here, we develop and apply a minimally-invasive aDNA sampling method for an assemblage of 42 prehistoric hunting weapons and tools from various Eurasian archaeological sites. We evaluated the impact of our approach on the specimens visually, microscopically and through Micro-CT scans. The surface impacts are marginal, ranging from 0.3-0.4 mm. Using a custom-made DNA capture kit for 54 mammalian species, we obtained sufficient aDNA to identify the taxa of 33% of the objects. For one of the tools, we recovered enough endogenous aDNA to infer the genetic affinities of the individual. Our results also demonstrate that ancient antler, one of the primary raw materials used during a large part of prehistory, is a reliable source of aDNA. Our minimally-invasive aDNA sampling method is therefore effective while preserving osseous objects for potential further analyses: morphometric, technical, genetic, radiometric and more.
... reeds) (Kharaneh IV), 1b sedge cones cf. Scirpus (Ohalo II), 1c Phragmites culm (Ohalo II); 2. woodland-type phytoliths, 2a coarse verrucate (dicot leaf) (Kharaneh IV), 2b platelet (dicot leaf) (Wadi Madamagh), 2c scalloped (dicot leaf) (Kharaneh IV); 3. parkland-type phytoliths, 3a wild grass husk (Ohalo II), 3b cereal straw (Ohalo II), 3c wild grass husk (Kharaneh IV) beads, ochre and other desirable items (Muheisen 1988;Nadel 1994;Byrd and Monahan 1995;Hershkovitz et al. 1995;Simmons and Nadel 1998;Bar-Yosef Mayer 2005;Martin et al. 2010;Richter et al. 2011Richter et al. , 2012Maher et al. 2012bMaher et al. , 2016Pedergnana et al. 2021). The Natufian period provides the earliest published evidence for recognizably modern food innovations in the form of bread-like remains at Shubayqa 1, and potentially fermented beer-like drinks at Raqefet cave, although it must be acknowledged that there are ongoing questions about the identification of fermentation damage in archaeological starches. ...
... These sites are all located in the direct vicinity of a marsh or lake environment with a wealth of perennially available wetland plant resources such as roots, as well as other critical animal resources. The rich animal resource availability at Ohalo II is discussed by Steiner et al. (2022), and at other sites includes, fish (Ohalo II and river Jordan Dureijat) (Zohar et al. 2018;Pedergnana et al. 2021), wetland birds (Ohalo II, Shubayqa 1) (Simmons and Nadel 1998;Yeomans and Richter 2016) and gazelle (Kharaneh IV) (Martin et al. 2010;Spyrou et al. 2019). The sites also display overwhelming archaeobotanical evidence of wetland use (Rosen 2004(Rosen , 2010(Rosen , 2011Marder et al. 2015;Pedersen et al. 2016;Ramsey et al. , 2017Arranz-Otaegui et al. 2018a, b;Sharon et al. 2020). ...
The paper discusses a multi-proxy archaeobotanical dataset from the published macrobotanical and microbotanical research of 19 Epipalaeolithic sites over a period of 13.5 ka (ca. 25-11.5 ka cal bp) in the southern Levant. The archaeobotanical record includes over 200 phytolith samples extracted from sediments of 11 sites, macrobotanical evidence from seeds, plant tissues and wood charcoal from 11 sites and other microbotanical data from starches and starch spherulites from three sites. Phytolith assemblages show that Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers relied on wetland plant resources, and the macrobotanical evidence demonstrates the cultural importance of wetland resources to Late Epipalaeolithic foodways. The paper assesses the archaeobotanical data, using niche construction theory (NCT) to argue that human impacts in the wetlands over generations increased wetland productivity and created long-lasting ecological and cultural inheritances that allowed for the evolution and proliferation of a wetland-based system of wild plant food production. This paper proposes the idea that wetlands provided Epipalaeolithic people with a ‘domestication laboratory’ that allowed them to interact and modify their environment and also to experiment and gain new knowledge to build the long-lasting ecological-cultural inheritances necessary for the transition to plant food production. Importantly, the ecological-cultural inheritance of wild plant food production in the wetlands enabled the non-linear transition to cereal-based wild plant food production and domestication that took place in the southern Levant.
... barbs). Excellent technical knowledge is shared by all group members, but each executes this knowledge in a specific way [50]. The ETI model expects this high diversity, also at the group level, yet predicts relatively low fidelity in transmitting group culture, i.e. low group inheritance. ...
The ‘Neolithic Revolution,’ sometimes referred to as the emergence of agriculture at its earliest in the southern Levant, is the most significant shift in human history, shaping the world we live in today. Yet, after 100 years of study, its major cause, tempo (gradual or revolutionary), and impact of human intentionality remain disputed. Here, we examine the research potential of an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI) to clarify this dramatic shift. Applying an ETI research perspective reveals how different causes and conditions lead to the same result, enabling a holistic view rather than a reduction of ‘Neolithic' to ‘agriculture,' or to one major climatic condition, inheritance system or standard evolutionary model, thus allowing us to clarify and bypass some of these heated, unresolved disputes. Additionally, unlike current archaeological emphasis on ‘where,' ‘when,' ‘why' and ‘how' questions, the ETI perspective offers a productive path for resolving a fundamental preliminary anomaly: why and how could the Neolithic lifeway evolve at all, given the selfish interest of individuals in a hunter–gatherer group? We do not intend to solve the shift to Neolithic lifeways, only to offer a fresh lens for examining it, emphasizing the relevance of tracking within and between group differences.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions’.
... The Late UP-Epipalaeolithic transition is accompanied by the accession of generalist dietary profiles (Dembitzer et al., 2022) and has traditionally been linked to "broad spectrum" adaptationsdthe expansion of diet breadth to include small and fast-moving gamedeven though the latter has a deeper historical foundation. Generally speaking, the LUP-Epipalaeolithic sequence nonetheless hatches patterns of economic intensification with increasing investment into ground stone technologies, smaller game including hare, fox, tortoise and birds, probably implicating delayed-return foraging systems reliant on trapping devices and nets, as well as emerging fishing technology (Pedergnana et al., 2021). The Levantine data suggest that this period-transgressive development is connected to tightening dependencies on caprines and gazelle, emerging animal management (Munro et al., 2018), low-level food production, local resource depression (Stiner, 2001), and, as at least argued for the Azraq wetlands, incipient ecosystem modification (Ramsey et al., 2015). ...
... Boulanger, Miller and Fisher 2021;Lin et al. 2010), non-flaked stone artefacts (e.g. Furey et al. 2020;Hayes et al. 2021;Pedergnana et al. 2021), and non-artefactual stone tools (e.g. Benito-Calvo et al. 2015;Haslam et al. 2013). ...
... Second is that these papers almost exclusively analyse non-flaked stone artefacts or non-artefactual tools (e.g. Cristiani et al. 2021;Dietrich and Haibt 2020;Paixão et al. 2021). The third is the strong link between functional studies and primate archaeology (e.g. ...
With over 200 peer-reviewed papers published over the last 20 years, 3D modelling is no longer a gimmick but an established and increasingly common analytical tool for stone artefact analysis. Laser and structured light scanning, photogrammetry, and CT scanning have all been used to model stone artefacts. These have been combined with a variety of different analytical approaches, from geometric morphometrics to custom reduction indices to digital elevation maps. 3D lithic analyses are increasingly global in scope and studies aim to address an ever-broadening breadth of research topics ranging from testing the functional efficiency of artefacts to assessing the cognitive capabilities of hominid populations. While the impact of the computational revolution on lithic analysis has been reviewed, the impact of 3D modelling on lithic analysis has yet to be comprehensively assessed. This paper presents a review of how 3D modelling in particular has impacted the field of stone artefact analysis. It combines a quantitative bibliometric analysis with a qualitative review to assess just how "revolutionary" 3D modelling has been for lithic analysis. It explores trends in the use of 3D modelling in stone artefact analysis, its impact on the wider lithic analysis field, and methodological, regional and theoretical gaps which future research projects could explore.
... This explains why terms such as "fishnet sinkers" or just "sinkers" are often used in the archaeological literature instead of the more descriptive or neutral terms "notched cobbles", "waisted weights" or 2 The perforation can be natural or artificial. 3 E. g., Ross 1911, 392;Hornell 1935, 43;Nougier 1951;Stewart 1977, 30-31;Weston 1978, 13-22;Brinkhuizen 1983;Berrétrot 1988, 43-45;Rouskas 1997, 95;Paulin 2007;Bērziņš 2008, 233;263-268;Prowse 2010;Gabaude 2013, 89;Ruikar 2013;Vincent/Watté 2014;Pétrequin et al. 2015;Pedergnana et al. 2021. "figure-of-eight weights" (e. g., Kuang-ti 2002;Nadel/Zaidner 2002;Prowse 2010). ...
... At the Neolithic site of Sārnate, in Latvia, remnants of a presumably folded net were found together with floats and sinkers inside a dwelling that contained a hearth (Bērziņš 2008, 238-239;263-265). 9 Use-wear and residue analyses, however, have been applied on the grooved stones from the Epipalaeolithic site of Jordan River Dureijat, Israel (Pedergnana et al. 2021). ...
This article focuses on notched cobbles-pieces of stone with indentations on roughly opposite parts of their periphery. While exhibiting a wide geographic and chronological distribution, these simple artefacts have rarely become the subject of systematic archaeological study. In an attempt to address this gap, we discuss the three main hypotheses regarding the functions of these objects (as weights for fishing, weaving or matting) and evaluate the archaeological and ethnographic evidence that is available for each one of them; provide a detailed presentation of the technomorpho-logical characteristics of the material from the Greek Neolithic site of Vare-meni Goulon and compare it to that from the neighbouring site of Servia; expand the comparative framework to include other sites from Greece and elsewhere; and finally reconstruct the uses of both the Varemeni and Servia notched cobbles as fishing gear-the hypothesis that emerged as most likely from our survey. If associated with fishing, notched cobbles represent one of the rare components of fish capture technology preserved from Neolith-ic Greece.
... The harpoon was a rare tool in the Natufian period (e.g., Turville-Petre 1932: Pl. XXVIII) and unknown from other periods in the southern Levant where line fishing with bone hooks appears to have been common until they were replaced by metal hooks in the Late Chalcolithic period (Le Dosseur 2003a:117;Pedergnana et al. 2021). The Barne'a harpoon could, therefore, be a local reinvention or perhaps was imported from Egypt, where they were known since the fifth millennium BCE and continued in use during the Naqada IIIA-D period (Lesur, pers. ...
The excavations at Ashqelon Barne‘a yielded 24 bone artifacts, comprising 22 finished tools and two pieces of production waste. Some characteristics of the assemblage are the predominance of heavy pointed tools, probably the result of a specific task that required sturdy tools, that led to the selection of bones from medium- and large-sized mammals and the avoidance of caprine bones, especially metapodials, which were quite common in Neolithic and Chalcolithic bone-tool assemblages. Other characteristics of the assemblage include the choice of fast, simple modes of production, such as abrasion, known in the region since the Neolithic period, the exploitation of the marine environment for raw materials, and the appearance of a harpoon, which may have been a local initiative or imported from Egypt.
