The Chronology of the Middle Paleolithic of the Levant

In 1980, following the first conference on the “Prehistory of the Levant” (Cauvin and Sanlaville 1981), we (the author and B. Vandermeersch) realized that the accepted Middle Paleolithic chronology was too short and the ordering of sites and industries was not well-founded. We therefore initiated a joint project to re-excavate and date key cave sites, including Kebara, Qafzeh, and Hayonim, with the hope of establishing a more sound chronology for the Levantine Mousterian. This volume contains many of the contributions that have been made to this on-going project. By now, the difficulties in establishing the chronology of the Middle Paleolithic assemblages in the Levant are fairly well-known. The earlier chronological model was based on the European concept that prevailed through the 1960s, namely, that the Mousterian industries date solely to the Last Glacial Age. Different opinions first emerged in Western Europe when assemblages bearing Mousterian characteristics were securely dated to the Penultimate Glacial cycle (or Riss III in the French Alpine-based time scale). In addition, dates from the MSA sequence in East and South Africa indicated a similar tendency towards increasing antiquity. However, the major shift began when new radiometric dating techniques became available (e.g., Aitken 1990). These included thermoluminescence (TL), electron spin resonance (ESR), Uranium series, and amino acid racemization (AAR). Middle Paleolithic sites of the Levant (Figure 1) have produced numerous assemblages since the inception of systematic excavations in the 1920s. In the 1930s, both Garrod and Neuville used French terminology to define the industries. Garrod recognized the inadequacy of this terminology which, at her time, distinguished between Levalloisian and Mousterian industries based on the proliferation of classical Levallois products in one entity and retouched pieces in the other. Her subdivision (Garrod and Bate 1937) into two stratified entities named Lower and Upper Levalloiso-Mousterian was employed by others for many years.

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