Yoel Melamed

Nuts, nut cracking, and pitted stones at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel

The Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov (Israel) has revealed a unique association of edible nuts with pitted hammers and anvils. Located in the Dead Sea rift, on the boundary between the Arabian and African plates, the site dates to the Early-Middle Pleistocene, oxygen isotope stage 19. In a series of strata, seven species of nuts, most of which can be cracked open only by a hard hammer, were uncovered. Five of the species are extant terrestrial nuts, and two are aquatic nuts now extinct in the Levant. In addition, the site yielded an assemblage of pitted hammers and anvils similar in pit morphology to those used by chimpanzees and contemporary hunter–gatherers. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that a site has offered both paleobotanical and lithic evidence of plant foods eaten by early hominins and technologies used for processing these foods. The evidence also sheds light on the structure of the community: ethnographic analogies suggest that mixedgender groups may have been active on the shores of paleoLake Hula.

Spatial Organization of Hominin Activities at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel

Home Is Where the Hearth Is One aspect of human intelligence is the ability to organize our living and working spaces. It was generally thought that this capability arose with modern humans in the past 100,000 years or so. However, Alperson-Afil et al. (p. 1677) found evidence of domestic organization 800,000 years ago at a Pleistocene hominin campsite in the Jordan Valley. Around patches of burnt debris, the remains of a wide range of plant and animal foodstuffs were found, including fruits and seeds, as well as remnants of turtles, elephants, and small rodents. Specific types of stone tools appear to have been made around the hearths, where there was also evidence of nut roasting and consumption of crabs and fish. In a more distant area there were signs of intensive flint knapping and food chopping. The spatial distribution of artifacts implies that living space was organized by use as early as 800,000 years ago. The spatial designation of discrete areas for different activities reflects formalized conceptualization of a living space. The results of spatial analyses of a Middle Pleistocene Acheulian archaeological horizon (about 750,000 years ago) at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel, indicate that hominins differentiated their activities (stone knapping, tool use, floral and faunal processing and consumption) across space. These were organized in two main areas, including multiple activities around a hearth. The diversity of human activities and the distinctive patterning with which they are organized implies advanced organizational skills of the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov hominins.

The plant component of an Acheulian diet at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel

Significance Our knowledge of the diet of early hominins derives mainly from animal skeletal remains found in archaeological sites, leading to a bias toward a protein-based diet. We report on the earliest known archive of food plants found in the superimposed Acheulian sites excavated at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel. These remains, some 780,000 y old, comprise 55 taxa, including nuts, fruits, seeds, vegetables, and plants producing underground storage organs. They reflect a varied plant diet, staple plant foods, seasonality, and hominins’ environmental knowledge and use of fire in food processing. Our results change previous notions of paleo diet and shed light on hominin abilities to adjust to new environments and exploit different flora, facilitating population diffusion, survival, and colonization beyond Africa. Diet is central for understanding hominin evolution, adaptation, and environmental exploitation, but Paleolithic plant remains are scarce. A unique macrobotanical assemblage of 55 food plant taxa from the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel includes seeds, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and plants producing underground storage organs. The food plant remains were part of a diet that also included aquatic and terrestrial fauna. This diverse assemblage, 780,000 y old, reflects a varied plant diet, staple plant foods, environmental knowledge, seasonality, and the use of fire in food processing. It provides insight into the wide spectrum of the diet of mid-Pleistocene hominins, enhancing our understanding of their adaptation from the perspective of subsistence. Our results shed light on hominin abilities to adjust to new environments, facilitating population diffusion and colonization beyond Africa. We reconstruct the major vegetal foodstuffs, while considering the possibility of some detoxification by fire. The site, located in the Levantine Corridor through which several hominin waves dispersed out of Africa, provides a unique opportunity to study mid-Pleistocene vegetal diet and is crucial for understanding subsistence aspects of hominin dispersal and the transition from an African-based to a Eurasian diet.

Invading a new niche: obligatory weeds at Neolithic Atlit-Yam, Israel

A characteristic group of obligatory weeds was found in the well of the submerged Pre-Pottery Neolithic C site of Atlit-Yam, Israel. Identifying these finds to species level was crucial for defining them as obligatory weeds. We deal here with the earliest and largest assemblage of obligatory and facultative weeds in the southwest Asian Neolithic. Atlit-Yam may reflect a stage in the establishment of weeds in cultivated fields. Weeds are an important resource for reconstructing the agricultural situation in archaeological sites, as weed-crop interactions reflect an agricultural lifestyle. Some of the weeds of Atlit-Yam grow in fields as well as in Mediterranean herbaceous habitats. This may indicate that the local herbaceous ecosystem was the original habitat of the weeds and the place where the first fields were planted. Presence in a single context of the earliest identified obligatory grain pest beetle (Sitophilus granarius) along with obligatory weeds reflects a novel change made to the ecosystem by the farmers, in which stored crops were invaded by pests.

Lathyrus clymenum L. in Israel: A "revival" of an ancient species

Four populations of an annual Lathyrus species new to Israel have been found since 1999. Three of these are located in the Coastal Plain, the fourth in the Judean Mountains. All grow in more-or-less disturbed habitats. These populations were identified by us as Lathyrus clymenum and compared with related or similar species to verify the identification. L. clymenum is a minor crop, grown mainly in some central Mediterranean and south European countries, but it was used for food, and traded as such, already over 3,750 years ago. Archaeobotanical findings of its seeds were discovered in the northern coast of Israel (Middle Bronze Age IIA). These findings were compared with recent material. The possibilities of its re-appearance in Israel, as escaped plants or colonizers/invaders, are discussed.