Wadi Rabah and related assemblages in the Southern Levant: interpreting the radiocarbon evidence

• Autores: Edward B. Banning
• Localización: Paléorient, ISSN 0153-9345, Vol. 33, Nº. 1, 2007 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Time and tradition: problems of chronology int the 6th-4th millennia in the Levant and Greater Mesopotamia), págs. 77-101
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Current lack of consensus on how to date or even classify �Late Neolithic� or �Early� or �Middle Chalcolithic� assemblages in the southern Levant is due not only to a past shortage of radiocarbon evidence but to misapplication of such evidence as we have an inconsistency in terminology. This paper presents some typological analyses of several assemblages with claimed �Wadi Rabah� and �Middle Chalcolithic� affinities as well as Bayesian analyses of the associated radiocarbon evidence. The results indicate that a group of assemblages with most of the characteristics we might consider most typical of Wadi Rabah date to the period 5800-5200 cal. BC. Some of the assemblages with this claim, however, fit neither the typological nor the chronological characteristics of Wadi Rabah, and appear to belong to a later, yet Pre-Ghassulian, Chalcolithic.