Early Upper Pleistocene Adaptations in the Levant’

SALLY R. BINFORD University of New Mexico

Human remains firmly associated with Mousterian artifacts and exhibiting characteristics transitional between those of Neanderthal and fully modern man are known from two Levantine sites. A survey of the archeological evidence suggests that three climatic zones were differentially exploited by Neanderthal man and that some of the sites document a shift in subsistence away from a generalized hunting pattern to the specialized hunting of large, migratory herd animals. The hypothesis is offered that the formal changes docu- mented for the Upper Paleolithic occurred in response to this basic shift in human ecology.

NE OF THE most persistent, and as 0 yet unsolved, problems in anthropol- ogy has been the adequate explanation of the initial appearance in the fossil record of anatomically modern man. Most authorities agree with the recent elevation in evolution- ary status of Neanderthal man from a sep- arate species that played no role in modem man’s ancestry to a historical subspecies of Homo sapiens (Dobzhansky 1962: 178-182, Mayr 1963:337, Howell 1965:128, Camp bell 1967:367-368). This conclusion has been reached on the basis of the similarities between the postcranial skeletons of modern man and Neanderthal man, the superficial nature of the cranial differences, and on a wide range of cultural evidence indicating that Neanderthal man possessed a far greater capacity for symbolic behavior than was be- lieved by early investigators (Howell 1965: 126-130, Bordes 1961, Campbell 1967:317, S. R. Binford 1968a, 1968b).

The only fossil forms that are clearly as- sociated with tools of Neanderthal manufac- ture and that exhibit characters transitional between those of Neanderthal man and fully modern fossil man have been found in Israel at two sites: Skhd, a small cave in the Wadi el-Mughara near the coastal plain; and Qafzeh, a larger cave just south of Naza- reth. Howell (1957, 1959), in his analysis of the stratigraphic and paleontological evi- dence, has suggested that these fossils (10 individuals from Skhiil and at least 7 from Qafzeh) are the remains of a generalized

Accepted for publication April, 16, 1968.

Neanderthal population in the Levant (versus the more specialized “classic” Neanderthals in western Europe) who were evolving to- ward the fully modern condition. Although Howell’s interpretation has been generally accepted, an explanation of how and why this subspecific change came about has not been offered. Most of the traditional “expla- nations” of both the biological and cultural changes have been framed in terms of in- vading populations of modern man from some unspecified point of origin who mixed with the Neanderthalers of the Levant and produced “hybrid” peoples and cultures (Garrod 1937, 1963; Garrod and Bate 1937; Garrod and Kirkbride 1961). The postulate of pre-Neanderthal fully anatomically mod- ern population is in no way supported by the fossil record, and it might also be pointed out that while human popula- tions can and do cross-breed, stone tools cannot.

The major changes in the archeological record that occur between the Mousterian or Middle Paleolithic (associated with Nean- derthal man) and the Upper Paleolithic (as- sociated with modern man) involve the use of a new technique of production of stone tools (punch-blade technique) and radical changes in the relative frequencies of tool forms. The best documented Upper Paleo- lithic sites are in France and eastern Eu- rope, where from 80-90 percent of the fau- nal remains from occupational debris are single species of herd mammals, especially reindeer in western Europe and mammoth in the east. These sites are located in valleys that served as migration routes for the herds

707

708 American Anthropologist [70, 1968

in question and where, consequently, man could count on large numbers of animals passing through on a regular seasonal basis.

Traditional explanations of the archeolog- ical differences between the Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic have stressed the appear- ance of new artifact forms in terms that in- dicate a belief in the capacity of stone tools to mutate, breed, and Consistent with this approach has been the expenditure of a great deal of research energy in trying to identify industries “transitional” between the two cultural phases (Garrod 1951, 1955; Pradel 1966). I have argued elsewhere that lithic industries are most profitably viewed as man’s adaptive means and that analytical tools must be developed for relating stone artifacts to human activities (Binford & Bin- ford 1966, s. R. Binford 1968b). The rapid adoption of new technological means for tool manufacture is prompted by adaptive shifts that probably precede the artifactual change seen in the archeological record.S Changes in artifact forms and/ or frequencies are realistically viewed, not in terms of some innate propensity on the part of man to im- prove himself and manufacture more varied and complex tool kits, but in terms of the requirements of the way in which he ex- ploited his environment. Arranging assem- blages of artifacts into nice sequences through time can document very well that changes have occurred; but the explanation of these changes lies in documenting a change in adaptation. The differences in the formal composition of assemblages in the Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic may mask underlying similarities in subsistence and social organization between the late Mousterian and the early Upper Paleolithic. If we wish to understand the “transition” that occurred, the place to look is in late Mousterian adaptations (S. R. Binford 1968b).‘ It was toward the delineation of this late Mousterian adaptive shift that my research was aimed.

The research is based upon several as- sumptions about the archeological record that are not traditionally held by Paleolithic scholars. In the first place, intersite variabil- ity on the same broad cultural level and in the same general area is assumed to reflect differences in function (settlement type) or differences in style (social identity). For the

Mousterian, the assumption of functional variability appears to be the more profitable to investigate (S. R. Binford 1968c), and preliminary work along these lines has yielded very promising results (Binford and Binford 1966, S. R. Binford 1968b). A sec- ond assumption is that changes of a major order in the archeological record reflect changes in adaptation, rather than, as is tra- ditionally held, “influences” from elsewhere, invasions of new populations, lithic muta- tions, etc. A third assumption is that demo- graphic variables, traditionally not even con- sidered by many Paleolithic archeologists, are crucial in explaining evolutionary changes in both cultural and human biological systems. In short, man is assumed to be one com- ponent in an ecosystem, and culture-his extra-somatic means of adaptation-has en- abled him to occupy an increasing variety of ecological niches, thus improving his ability to capture and harness energy. (This an- alytical frame was very elegantly used by Campbell [1967:200-2081 to explain the evolution of genus Homo.)

The existing literature on the prehistory of the Levant contains a number of fascinat- ing bits of data which, if analyzed from the point of view outlined above, give us some indication of the changes that may have oc- curred in the Mousterian. Mousterian sites in this area are broadly contemporaneous with those in Europe; the age of the Euro- pean Mousterian is Early Wurm, the first part of the last major glacial period of the Pleistocene. This dating can be supported by both stratigraphy and radiocarbon dating (Howell 1961:9-10, Oakley 1966:166). The great majority of known Mousterian as- semblages in the Levant make extensive use of a technique of flake removal from flint cores known as Levallois; this kind of Mousterian is most correctly termed “Mousterian of Levallois facies” (Bordes 1953) but for brevity’s sake will be referred to here as Levallois-Mousterian. There is an- other less frequently occurring Mousterian that is characterized both by a different tech- nique of flake production and by different frequencies of tool forms; this facies is now generally known as the Jabrudian (Bordes 1955, Howell 1961). The Jabrudian is char- acterized by high proportions of thick scrapers and choppers, the Levallois-Mous-

BINFORD] Upper Pleistocene in the Levant 709

terian by higher frequencies of points and knives. The chronological relationship be- tween these two facies is far from certain. It can be argued that most of the known Leval- lois-Mousterian occupations are later (Howell 1961 :9), but the evidence is not conclusive. Two ciccurrences of an industry termed “pre- Aurignacian” between Jabrudian levels at the site of Jabrud (Rust 1950, Bordes 1955, 1960) and a similar but less clearcut instance at the site of Tabfin (Garrod and Bate 1937, Garrod 1956) certainly raise some ques- tions. Also, at the Lebanese rockshelter of Abri i!umoffen (Adlun) Jabrudian tools ov- erlie several levels of artifacts made with Levallois technique (Garrod and Kirkbride 1961). In the absence of a clear Upper Pleistcicene geological or faunal sequence for the Levant as a whole, the problem of intersite correlations remains to be satisfac- torily :solved.

There are, however, some deeply strati- fied sites whose internal relative cultural chronologies can be made use of if a differ- ent order of question is asked of the data. We do not ask “What is the relative chro- nology between sites X, Y, and Z?’ but “What does the nature of each site-its en- vironmental setting, its cultural sequence, its paleontological remains-tell us about Mousbrian adaptations in the Levant?’ We also as,k about the geographical distribution of types of sites in order to determine the environmental correlates of kinds of occupa- tions. ’We wish to know if there was differ- ential land use in the Levant by Neanderthal populations. We also wish to compare land use of Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic populations in order to measure demo- graphic differences and similarities. Three sub-arms of the Levant were studied: (1) valleys draining eastward into the Jordan- Rift Valley; (2) the coastal plain; (3) val- leys 011 the western slopes of the coastal ranges which drain into the Mediterranean.

(1) The Jordan Valley is characterized by geographers as a steppe zone:

Immediately east of the crest of the coastal ranges, rainfall diminishes sharply in amount, though the season of onset remains the same [late fall or early winter]. . . . The lowland troughs . . . display a climatic regime markedly different from that of the highlands to the east and west. Though none of the

troughs greatly exceeds 10 miles in width- being often much less-we can distinguish a separate regime.. . .

The great depth of the Jordan Rift, and its openness to the direct rays of the sun, give rise to higher temperatures and to a greatly diminished rainfall [Fisher 1956: 388-3921. Two provinces of the Jordan Valley have

received archeological attention: Lower Gal- ilee and the eastern slopes of the Judean Hills.

Lower Galilee-The Mousterian sites ex- cavated in this area are Emireh and Zuttiyeh (Turville-Petre 1927), Amud Cave (Mani- shi et al. 1963, Suziki et al. 1965), and Mugharet es-Shubbabiq (S. R. Binford 1966). The shelters of Emireh were exca- vated over forty years ago by an inexperi- enced amateur, and the findings from the site are not reassuring. I am inclined to agree with Garrod’s original statement on the site-it is badly disturbed and contains a mixture throughout of several cultural peri- ods (Garrod 1951:123). The other sites have all yielded Levallois-Mousterian with, in addition, some Jabrudian Mousterian of uncertain provenance at Zuttiyeh (Garrod 1963). Amud, Shubbabiq, and Zuttiyeh con- tained from 1.5-2.0 meters of Mousterian cultural deposits. All have yielded a fauna in which Dama and Gazella are the dominant forms but high frequencies of other fauna are also contained; in none of these sites are there remains of Upper Paleolithic occupa- tions. Both Shubbabiq and Amud contained Bronze Age and Roman remains overlying the Mousterian, so we cannot explain the absence of Upper Paleolithic by lack of life space.

On the eastern slopes of the Judean Hills, five sites (four caves and one rockshelter) were excavated and reported by Neuville ( 1951 ) ; they contained Levallois-Mouste- rian. In the caves (Abou-Sif, Sahba, et-Tab- ban, and Oumm-Naqous) the Levallois- Mousterian deposits ranged from 0.80-1.40 meters in depth. Abou-Sif and Sahba have no Upper Paleolithic horizons, and, al- though Neuville terms the upper levels at et-Tabban Phase I of the Upper Paleolithic, he does so because of the presence of the Emireh point. The value of this artifact as a fossile directeur has recently received con- siderable criticism in the literature (Skinner

710 American Anthropologist [70, 1968 I 1966, S. R. Binford 1966, 1968b), and its Upper Paleolithic artifacts. The only ,

context is most often unmistakably Mouste- Mousterian site in the area in which there rian. Oumm-Naqous' Mousterian level is ov- are considerable Upper Paleolithic deposits erlain by a dark clayey level that yielded ten is the Abri de l'Erg el-Ahmar. The fauna

BINFORD] Upper Pleistocene in the Levant 711 from the sites unfortunately received no quantitative treatment, but the elements are slightly different than in Lower Galilee: Equus cf. mauritanicus, Gazella sp., a large bovid, and Capra ibex.

(2) The coastal plain today is narrow, although the present-day continental shelf was exposed during the periods of lower sea levels associated with glacial periods (Av- nimelech 1952, 1962). The coast receives abundant winter rainfall, although there is a sharp gradient from north to south. The Leb- anese coast receives over thirty inches per year and Gaza only 14 (Fisher 1956:388- 392). Although by June the rains have ceased and do not resume again until fall, for most of the coast grasses and marshes remain fresh until autumn.5

The coast of Lebanon has been worked rather extensively (Fleisch 1954, 1956) and has yielded a number of Mousterian loca- tions: the shelter at Adlun, also called Abri Zumoffen (Garrod and Kirkbride 1961), Ras el-Kelb (Garrod and Henri-Martin 1961), the open air station of Amrit (Haller 1941), and Abou-Halka (Haller 1942-1943). (Amrit and Abou-Halka are north of the area shown in the map.) Adlun and Ras el-Kelb have thin and intermittent Mousterian horizons. Abou- Halka has only one horizon about 20 cms. thick that contains any Mousterian, and it is apparently mixed in with some Upper Paleo- lithic. The tool-bearing level at Amrit is also about 20 cms. thick.6

There have been several open air stations with Mousterian artifacts located on the coastal plain of Israel (Bar-Yosef 1966: personal communication), but they have never been systematically excavated or de- scribed. Undoubtedly many coastal plain sites are now drowned.

(3) A remarkable change occurs as one leaves the coastal plain for the mountains. The western slopes receive the same rainfall as the coasts, but temperatures are lower, and from January through March or April the wadis become active streams. The grasses in the upland meadows appear with the first rains and generally remain green through early spring. The wadis on the west- em slopes of the coastal ranges have yielded the most impressive, deeply stratified Mousterian sites in the Levant. The best known series of sites are in Wadi el-Mug- hara, an intermittent stream that rises in an

upland plain in Mt. Carmel and drains into the coastal plain at Athlit. Three caves occur just east of where the wadi joins the coastal plain: Tabiin, el-Wad, and Skhiil (Garrod and Bate 1937).

Tabiin contains over 23 meters of cultural deposits: 15 meters of Jabrudian and more than 8 meters of Levallois-Mousterian. The stratigraphic picture at the site is far from clear, but current work being done on the remaining deposits by Arthur J. Jelinek of the University of Arizona should help to clarify the sequence at this important site. The Mousterian deposits at Tabfin are topped by a disturbed soil that has yielded Bronze Age to Recent remains.

El-Wad contained more than seven me- ters of Levallois-Mousterian, overlain by about two meters of Upper Paleolithic de- posits.

Skhiil contained three meters of Leval- lois-Mousterian overlain by a disturbed layer that yielded Upper Paleolithic and later materials. Although Garrod (Garrod and Bate 1937: 1 13-1 17) claimed chronological overlap for the Levallois-Mousterian at the three sites, Howell (1957, 1959) argued on faunal and stratigraphic grounds that el- Wad and Skhiil’s Mousterian occupations are later than those at Tabiin. This has recently been confirmed by radiocarbon dating (Higgs 1961 : 149, Oakley 1966: 166). Bate’s analysis of the fauna from these sites and the climatic inferences drawn from them have been the subject of much criticism and controversy for a number of years (Garrod and Bate 1937: 139-227, Howell 1959:7-12, Neuville 1951:250-253, Hooijer 1961:38- 39, Shalem 1950). The point to be made here is that Bate notes that the frequency of Bos (wild cattle) remains increases in the Upper Levallois-Mousterian at Tabiin and that numbers of Bos show an enormous in- crease at Skhd (Garrod and Bate 1937: 148- 149). It should be noted that it is also the site of Skhiil that yielded the remains of ten humans who appear to be transitional be- tween Neanderthal and fully modern man.

Qafzeh is situated between the Mt. Car- me1 range and the higher coastal mountains of Lebanon overlooking a pass called the Plain of Esdraelon. Near Acre the Plain of Esdraelon forms a broad valley, but as it rises inland it is a narrow corridor only one to two miles wide (Fisher 1956:382). It is

712 American Anthropologist [70, 1968

where this pass is narrow, at the southern- most portion of the Galilee highlands just south of Nazareth, that Qafzeh is located. The site is briefly described by Neuville (1951: 179-184) but has never been fully re- ported. The cultural deposits consist of more than 4.50 meters of Levallois-Mouste- rian overlain by 3.50 meters of Upper Pa- kolithic. The fauna has never been de- scribed, nor have the artifacts, Howell (1957) analyzed the human burials from the site and found the same intermediate characteristics as in the Skhd burials.

The shelter of Kslr ’Akil is situated in a bluff above the valley of Antelias. The val- ley runs from the foothills of the Lebanon range and opens out into the narrow coastal plain just north of Beirut; the site is located about 2 kms. upstream from the coastal plain (Ewing 1947, Wright 1951). The cul- tural deposits at this site are more than 23 meters deep; 4 meters are clearly Levallois- Mousterian, while the overlying 3 meters are described by Ewing as a “mixed zone.” This is overlain by more than 10 meters of Upper Paleolithic. The Mousterian artifacts are at present being studied by John Waechter at London University. The vertebrate fauna has been analyzed by Hooijer (1961). The most striking aspect of the fauna from the upper Levallois-Mousterian levels is the drastic in- crease in the number of Bos, which is repre- sented by the remains of 539 individuals, al- though the preceding level yielded only 12 (Hooijer 1961:57). Rhinoceros also makes its first and only appearance at Kslr ’Akil in the upper Levallois-Mousterian horizon. The best represented species in this level is Dama mesopofumica (Hooijer 1961 :58). In arguing against a strictly climatic interpreta- tion of the fauna, such as that made by Bate for the Wadi el-Mughara caves, Hooi- jer states:

We have noticed an outbreak of Rhinoceros and Bos at levels XXVIA-XXXIXB. This may be interpreted as the result of environ- mental changes having taken place, but it as well may be attributed to choice on the part of the Palaeolithic hunters. . . . What we have been sampling in the present study is not the climate and the environment, but the history of the Palaeolithic menu at the rock shelter of KsSlr ’Akil [1961:62].1

Thc site also yielded the maxilla of an im-

mature human for which Ewing (1963: 101- 104) sees traits intermediate between those of Neanderthal and fully modern man. The provenance of this maxilla is unfortunately not certain, but Ewing and Hooijer agree that it most probably came from level XXV, immediately above the levels that showed a great increase in Bos (Ewing 1966).

There are several other sites in these westward draining wadis of the Levant. Ex- amples are Shukbah (Garrod 1928, 1942) with an estimated 15 meters of Levallois- Mousterian, and Abu Usba (Stekelis and Haas 1952) with almost 3.50 meters of Lev- allois-Mousterian. In both cases, however, the overlying Natufian received most of the at- tention and the Mousterian was scarcely de- scribed. The faunal remains from the relevant levels at Abu Usba were not described at all; the dominant forms from Shukbah were Dama, Gazella, and Bos.

The cave of Kebarah is also situated in one of these valleys, 21 kms. south of Wadi el-Mughara. A brief unsigned note in the Is- rael Exploration Journal of 1953 indicates that there are “several meters” of Mouste- rian and two overlying Upper Paleolithic levels. The late Professor Stekelis was analy- zing the material from the site during my stay in Israel in 1962, and he was kind enough to show me his unpublished floor- plans of the Mousterian levels. When the analysis of the site is completed, presumably by Dr. Ofer Bar-Yosef, who was Prof. Stek- elis’ assistant, the results should be notewor- thy.

The generalizations to be drawn from the brief survey above (based on admittedly small sample sizes) are as follows:

(1) The sites in the wadis that drain into the Jordan-Rift Valley, both in Lower Gali- lee and in the Judean Hills, have yielded, on the average, about 1.5 meters of Mousterian deposits. Only at one location (Abri de 1’Erg el-Ahmar) is the Mousterian suc- ceeded by substantial Upper Paleolithic oc- cupations. It should be noted that the Lower Galilee Mousterian horizons are slightly thicker than those to the south; this area receives more rainfall today than the eastern slopes of the Judean Hills and prob- ably this was true for the Upper Pleistocene also (Fisher 1956:383, Amiran 1960:464, Shalem 1950: 605).

BINFORD] Upper Pleistocene in the Levant 713

(2) The sites on the coastal plain contain relatively thin and intermittent Mousterian horizons.

(3) The sites with the thickest layers of Mousterian cultural remains, as well as most of those that are overlain by repeated Upper Paleolithic occupations (el-Wad, Kslr ’Akil, Kebarah, Qafzeh), occur in valleys on the western slopes of the coastal ranges. At two locations (KsPr ’Akil and Skhiil) there has been noted a marked in- crease in remains of Bos in horizons that have yielded late Levallois-Mousterian. In the upper Levallois-Mousterian horizons of three locations (Qafzeh, Skhiil, and Kslr ’Akil) there are human remains that appear to be transitional between Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens.

Certainly our question about differential land use within the Mousterian must be answered affirmatively, and the isomorphism of differential depth of deposit and type of climatic zones is striking. The question re- mains of how much climatic change oc- curred between the period under study and today. While there is no clearcut agreement on details of a Pleistocene climatic sequence for the Levant, the simple and direct plu- vial-interpluvial alternation correlated with northern latitude glaciation and interglacials has been abandoned, even by its formerly staunch advocates (see, for example, Garrod and Bate 1937 vs. Garrod 1963; Picard 1937 vs. Picard 1965). There is general agreement, however, that during the Upper Pleistocene the Levant was slightly cooler and more heavily wooded than it is today (Howell 1959, 1961; Shalem 1950:645-646; Haas 1962: personal communication). The only departure noted from these conditions is a slight drying trend toward the end of Early Wiirm (Butzer 1958:102, Howell 1959:7). There is no evidence to suggest that the seasonality of rainfall was any less marked than at present (Willet 1950)) and some authorities suggest that it may have been even more extreme (Howell 1959:6). There is, therefore, good reason to think that many of the environmental differences ob- served between the three areas studied also obtained during the early Upper Pleistocene.

If we examine the data from the archeo- logical sites in our sample, what information can be obtained on patterns of environmen-

tal exploitation? We have practically no in- formation on the coastal plain sites, except for the fact that the levels are generally thinner than those from the other two zones and therefore represent less frequent and less dense occupations. The sites in the val- leys that drain into the Jordan-Rift Valley display three features of interest here: first, the Mousterian deposits seldom exceed 1.5 m.; second, these deposits are not, except for one case, overlain by Upper Paleolithic occupations; third, the faunal remains from the Mousterian horizons suggest a general- ized hunting pattern in which several forms are common but no one species greatly out- numbers others. The sites from the third area under study-the valleys on the west- ern slopes of the coastal ranges-have yielded from 3 to 23 m. of Mousterian, often succeeded by intensive Upper Paleo- lithic occupations. The fauna from these sites suggest that during the terminal Mousterian there was a shift in hunting pat- tern away from a generalized use of animal resources toward a heavy dependence on wild cattle and fallow deer. The behavioral attributes of these wild ungulates are rele- vant for explaining the differential site distri- butions noted above.

Three types of localities are generally in- cluded in the habitat of wild ungulates-wet season grazing, dry season grazing, and mi- gration routes between these (Pearsall 1962:343). Running, grazing animals are also characterized by their tendency to aggregate into herds (Odum 1959:400). While the last of the wild cattle of Europe and Western Asia (Bos primigenius) be- came extinct in the seventeenth century, written descriptions and drawings exist. These wild cattle appear to have been huge animals, with bulls standing up to six and one half feet at the shoulder; they were ap- parently fierce, temperamental, and ex- tremely agile (Zeuner 1963 : 202-204).

These data, when put together with dif- ferential site distributions, allow US to pro- pose that during Early Wiirm man in the Levant increasingly exploited the ecotones of the region; an ecotone is “a transition be- tween two or more communities” in which “both the number of species and the popula- tion density of some of the species are greater . . . than in the communities flanking

it” (Odum 1959:278). Such an ecotone would be the valleys leading from the coastal plain to the foothills and upland meadows of the coastal mountain ranges.

The increase in aridity noted for the last part of Early Wiirm would have intensified the seasonal behavior of the ungulates in the environment, especially the large animals such as Bos and Dama, whose food require- ments are great. The relatively damper coastal plain would have provided summer pasture; the inland, more elevated plains such as the Plain of Esdraelon, the high- lands of the Valley of Antelias, and the plain at the head of Wadi el-Mughara would have been the winter grazing grounds. Grasses in these upland areas appear only after the onset of the late fall rains. The lower reaches of these valleys would have been the migration routes through which large numbers of animals passed on a regular, seasonal basis.

The hunting and butchering of large numbers of wild cattle by a few individuals would have been an overwhelming task, and there would have been increased selective pressure for larger numbers of humans to aggregate, especially during the herds’ mi- gration seasons. The kind of cooperation re- quired for large enterprises such as this is, among known primitive peoples, based on ties of kinship that produce a network of mutual rights and obligations between smaller social units (Service 1962). We may therefore envision that in the change to the systematic exploitation of migratory herd mammals there was a concomitant change in human mating pattern to a broader kind of exogamous linkage between formerly self-sufficient small bands. This kind of shift from a system that tends to isolate local groups to one that brings local groups to- gether into a broqler social unit has been proposed by ethnologists in response to a similar subsistence change. The southwest- ern Chippewa, the Plains Cree, and the Da- kota, upon changing from a woodland-hunt- ing-and-trapping adaptation to the exploita- tion of large gregarious mammals on the Plains, are thought to have undergone the kind of mating change suggested above (Eggan 1955:530-532, Hickerson 1962: 74-76). It is not suggested here that Nean- derthal populations before this time prac-

714 American Anthropologist [70, 1968

ticed local endogamy, but rather that the kind and extent of exogamous pattern be- tween local groups changed in response to the need for larger groups of males as a labor force and perhaps also to protect fa- vored locations for the harvesting of game. Such a change would have greatly increased rates of gene flow, thus producing one of the conditions leading to evolutionary change.

The cooperative hunting of a few males to capture one or two animals characterized human subsistence from at least Mindel times (Campbell 1967:202, Howell 1965: 83), but the large-scale systematic ex- ploitation of migratory herd mammals is a qualitatively different kind of activity, one that makes totally different structural de- mands on the human groups involved. This kind of hunting is known to characterize Upper Paleolithic adaptations, and it is pro- posed here that there is evidence to suggest that not only did this hunting pattern appear before the Upper Paleolithic, but that the formal changes documented from Neander- thal to modern man and from the Mouste- rian to the Upper Paleolithic occurred in re- sponse to this basic structural change in eco- logical relationships.

The above arguments are offered not as a thoroughly documented, proven explanation of biological and cultural changes in the late Mousterian of the Levant, but as a model that requires further testing. The sample of sites on which the model is based is admittedly small, and some relevant classes of data were not collected or reported in the earlier site reports. The point to be made here is that this interpretation is testable and can be tested rather economically. A syste- matic survey of site in the three zones would require only test pit excavation to deter- mine: (1 ) if the pattern of site use and dif- ferential depth of deposit hold up when a larger sample of sites is drawn; (2) whether the adaptive shift suggested can be further documented for sites in the wadis of the western slopes of the coastal ranges; (3) whether the suggested correlation between a slight climatic drying trend, change in adap- tation, and appearance of forms of man transitional between Neanderthal and mod- ern man can be supported. The further ex- cavation of new sites from this area without

BINFORD] Upper Pleistocene in the Levant 715 specific questions in mind will probably do little toward the elucidation of the problem under discussion. No excavator can observe everything about a site or its contents; it is suggested here that the preexcavation for- mulation of hypotheses, based on extant data, can give badly needed direction to new research efforts.

NOTES Presented in abbreviated form at the 66th Meet-

ings of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C., December 1967.

‘This paper was read in manuscript form by Mrs. Lorraine Copeland of the Institute of Archaeology, London, who has offered some very useful criticism and added to the sample of Lebanese sites considered (see Note 6).

Mrs. Copeland has expressed the opinion that my insistence that stone tools do not evolve is rather extreme, since directional changes in the composi- tion of lithic assemblages can be demonstrated. I do not question in the slightest that the contents of archeological sites change through time, nor that in general they tend to become more complex. I do, however, strenuously object to the sympathetic fal- lacy and to the kinds of thinking it can lead to with respect to stone tools. Only living systems contain genetic material, and only they are capable of evo- lution. The attribution of evolutionary capabilities to stone tools most often leads to “explaining” vari- ability within or between lithic assemblages in re- ductionist terms-cg., “The tools from site X are the ancestral form of the tools from site Y.” In its most extreme form this kind of thinking associates components of assemblages from the same site with different kinds of people. A classic example of this can be found in a report of a site in Lebanon, the Abri Zumoffen, where blades and thick scrapers oc- curred within the same level. The authors offered the remarkable interpretation that this phenomenon was produced by “two peoples who continued to live side by side for some time, perhaps as the result of intermarriage” (Garrod & Kirkbride 1961 :43). This is an intriguing and baffiing notion from both a biological and cultural point of view.

Mrs. Copeland has expressed some uneasiness with the statement that the change from Middle to Upper Paleolithic involved the rapid replacement of one technological means of tool manufacture by another, since many of the tools in the early Upper Paleolithic of the Near East are made by Middle Paleolithic techniques. The phenomenon is not lim- ited to the Near East; in Europe also the early Upper Paleolithic contains many implements that are not manufactured by punch-blade technique. The problem here is to distinguish between morpho- logical changes in tools and the techniques by which the blanks for the tools were produced. Certainly the forms of the tools themselves change before new techniques for their manufacture are consis- tently used. Yet when a drastic increase in blade technology appears, it tends to replace in large part the earlier techniques. The word “rapid” is a rela-

tive one, and given the two million years for which lithic industries are documented, 1 will stick with my assertion that the change from a technique that produced mostly flakes to one that produced mostly blades was rapid.

’The point that adaptive shifts in earlier levels must be understood in order to explain changes appearing in subsequent levels of organization has been recently made with respect to major steps in vertebrate evolution (Romer 1967: 1633-1634).

‘In criticism of this statement, Mrs. Copeland has mentioned her difficulties in maintaining a gar- den on the coast at Beirut during the spring, sum- mer, and fall. Since there is almost no extant coastal plain in this region, obviously my generalization is valid only for the more southern areas where there is a rather extensive coastal plain. The experience of the Israeli Department of Health in eradicating malaria from these regions gives some indication that mosquito-breeding conditions prevail.

OThe very useful inventory of Paleolithic sites in Lebanon (Copeland & Wescombe 1965, 1966) was graciously sent to me by Mrs. Copeland. There is an imposing list of Middle Paleolithic coastal sites, but unhappily they consist principally of poorly documented surface finds. The only sites that might raise questions about the generalizations I have made are Ras el-Kelb, Bezez, and Nahr Ibrahim. Ras el-Kelb contains deep deposits-i.e., there are several meters of breccia. However, according to the section published by Garrod and Henri-Martin (1961), the Mousterian horizons do not occur con- tinuously throughout the breccia but appear as dis- crete, discontinuous levels.

Bezez (Garrod 1966), a cave very near the present shore, obviously contained rather substantial de- posits. The history of the cave and the answer to how much of the deposits are in sifu are still far from clear (Garrod 1966:8).

Nahr Ibrahim, another cave near the coast, has thick breccias that have not yet been dug. Whether or not they will yield evidence of continuous or dis- crete Mousterian occupations can obviously not be determined at this time.

Even if the deposits at Bezez and Nahr Ibrahim should contradict the generalizations made in this paper, the overwhelming proportion of the sites on the coastal plain appear to support my statement that the coastal occupations are less continuous than those in the wadis to the west. Also, as Mrs. Cope- land points out: “In talking about what are toduy coastal sites, it should be kept in mind that they may have been far from the shoreline durin the Wiirm. . . . [This] puts them nearer ecologicaPiy to such valley sites as Ksar ’Akil” (Copeland 1968).

‘Higgs (1961) in his paper dealing with faunal changes in the Mediterranean coastal areas states that the increases in Bos noted for the Mt. Carmel sites and KsPr ’ALil are directly due to chanpes in climate. It is argued here that even minor chmatic shifts can produce changes in the distribution of game and that man would respond adaptively to such altered distributions. The frequencies of spe- cies of game in archeological sites is not an ade- quate direcf measure of frequencies occurring in nature; the presence of faunal remains at any site is the result of human action, and it does not seem

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