PALEORIENT, vol. 20/1 - 1994

NOTES ET VARIETES

A BUTCHERED ELEPHANT SKULL AND ASSOCIATED ARTIFACTS FROM THE ACHEULIAN SITE OF GESHER BENOT YA'AQOV, ISRAEL

N. GOREN-INBAR, A. LISTER, E. WERKER and M. CHECH

Excavations at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (henceforth GB Y) were resumed in the summer of 1989, following the discovery of previously unknown exposures of the Benot Ya'aqov Formation (1). During this first of three excavation seasons to have taken place, an Acheulian occupation area was discovered, various aspects of which are presently under interdisciplinary study. Of the material recovered therein, an elephant's skull, certain stone artifacts and a wooden log, all of them from excavation Area В (2) are most notable.

Apart from furnishing a detailed description of these items and their stratigraphical context, the present article proposes a possible explanation of their primary depositional context. It further expands on environmental and behavioral implications for Middle Pleistocene hominid activities in the Dead Sea Rift Valley.

The cluster of items which is the subject of the present article was found in layer II-6. This layer, which was observed in Trench II, is about 1.5 m thick and consists of sediments of fluvial-limnic origin. The layer, exposed some 3 m west of the truncated anticlinal ridge of the Benot Ya'aqov Formation, dips 40-45° to WSW (3). It is the only layer exposed in trench II which contains distinct horizons of pebbles, boulders and artifacts (including boulder-sized clasts, artificially modified into giant cores). The presence of organic material in conjunction with numerous stone artifacts, led to the focusing of attention on this Layer. It was eventually subdivided into five levels (levels 1-4; 4b), the uppermost of which was exposed underneath the conformably overlying clayey sediment of layer II- 5. In the course of the excavation which was conducted along the dip and strike of level 1, an abundance of Acheulian stone artifacts was recovered, in association with animal bones and varied wood fragments.

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