Late Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherer Adaptations in the Inland Levant: The Wadi Al-Hasa Model (West-Central Jordan)

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With National Science Foundation support Drs. Nancy Coinman and Deborah Olszewski will conduct two seasons of archaeological research at a series of sites located in the upland region of western Jordan in the vicinity of Wadi Al-Hasa. Although the area consists today of dissected floodplain, during the later part of the last ice age it contained a lake and extensive associated marshland which varied in size and configuration as climate changed. During their prior work in the area Drs. Coinman and Olszewski have located a large number of archaeological sites which span the time period between ca. 25,000 to 12,000 years ago and these form the focus of their present project. With the assistance of students and a number of specialists the investigators will pursue several goals. They will collect data to reconstruct in detail the changes in paleoenvironment over time. Information on macro-climatic regimes, relative moisture regimes and spring and tufa formations will be sought. Varying lake levels and associated laucustrine features will be determined. Survey of archaeological sites will be continued and occurrences mapped to determine population distribution on the landscape at different periods of time. Several rockshelters located in past research will be tested to determine the extent and nature of archaeological deposits and excavation will be expanded at two sites where past work has confirmed the presence of deep stratified deposits with good overall preservation of faunal remains. On this basis it should be possible to reconstruct the human response to dramatically changing environmental conditions. Archaeologists wish to understand how human societies at a technologically simple level adapt and map themselves onto a varied environment. Because of the long prehistoric record and its role as one cradle of civilization, many researchers have focused on the Near East and a number of models have been proposed. The Al-Hasa area is interesting not only because of its well preserved archaeological remains but also because preliminary data indicates that the settlement pattern fits no known Old World model. Coinman and Olszewski have devised another approach developed in an environmentally similar region in the Western United States and wish to determine how well this fits the Al-Hasa data. It is at the end of this period that domestic plants and animals appear in the Near East and the research may also shed light on this basic human transition to a settled way of life. This research is important because it will increase our understanding of human adaptation. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists and assist in the training of undergraduate students.