Noisy beginnings: The Initial Upper Palaeolithic in Southwest Asia
2020
Goring-Morris, A Nigel | Belfer-Cohen, Anna
The emergence of the Upper Palaeolithic in Southwest Asia is considered a unique phenomenon in relation to other parts of the Old World. Besides the local circumstances that are particular to each region, this is the only region outside Africa with the clear presence of modern humans producing Middle Palaeolithic industries. Still, it seems that also here, as elsewhere outside Africa, the UP is conceived mostly as portraying a break with MP life-ways, and continuity, if indicated, is on a rather modest scale.While the geographical extent of the Levant (i.e. the eastern Mediterranean, from the Taurus Zagros mountains in the north, to southern Sinai and from the coast eastwards of the Rift valley into the Saudi Arabian deserts) is relatively small, at least four or five variants of Initial Upper Palaeolithic lithic industries have been identified/defined, based on techno-typological criteria, geographical constraints and differing chronologies, as demonstrated at Boqer Tachtit, Tor Sadaf, Ksar Akil, Umm el-Tlel, and Ucagizli.Besides the usual obstacles archaeologists face in trying to identify and define relationships between various archaeological assemblages in time and space, prehistoric research of the Levant, like other regions, suffers from its Eurocentric past and international present, whereby research reflects the different ‘weltanschauung’ and paradigms of the scholars currently conducting it.We shall attempt to present a coherent picture of the present state of affairs, as well as our own understanding of the Levantine IUP, based on the locally available data within the wider context of current prehistoric research.
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