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Flint Provenance Studies as an Indicator of Cultural Change at Hayonim Cave, Israel

Kelman R. (1), Ben Dor Y. (2), Hovers E. (1)

(1) Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

(2) Geological Survey of Israel, 32 Yesha'ayahu Leibowitz, Jerusalem 9692100, Israel

This study aims to use the chemical properties of flint to understand the human use of landscape and cultural changes during the middle Pleistocene. Hayonim Cave in the Western Galilee has layers corresponding to two separate cultural entities across different archaeological periods (the Lower- and Middle Palaeolithic). For societies of hunter-gatherers, responding to changing environments entails being equipped with raw material supplies and ensuring that those supplies are ready to be used for hunting, gathering plants, or other activities. As tools are continuously used, their modification is necessary to maintain sharp and usable edges, leaving increasingly invasive signs on the tool. By looking at these artifacts it is possible to infer the amount of investment in the tools, which may indicate that they were part of a mobile toolkit supplying ancient hominins as they travelled through the landscape. The high frequencies of reworked tools at Hayonim Cave allow us to check if there is a connection between tool type and raw material origin. In this study we will use inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) and inductively coupled optical-emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) for detailed chemical profiling in order to identify the geological origins of stone tools with varying levels of human investment. This allows us to discuss the implications of provenance results with respect to their archaeological layer, tool type and extent of processing. Distinguishing between “local” and “exotic” flint sources will allow us to estimate the economic territory of resource acquisition, and check whether more investment was put into tools made of flint procured from further away. Comparing between the archaeological layers can indicate changing economic decisions over time, possibly indicating broader cultural changes.

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