2007 Media Releases
Thursday 20 December, 2007
Global focus for La Trobe research into prehistoric tool kit
La Trobe University research into a 14,000 year old tool kit found in an excavation in Jordan – said to be one of the most complete and well preserved of its kind – has provided rare insights into the daily activities of prehistoric man.
The work, by senior lecturer in Archaeology Dr Phillip Edwards, has just been published in the latest issue of the prestigious international journal, Antiquity and featured on ‘Discovery Channel’.
The ancient tool kit, believed to have been a hide or wicker bag carried over the shoulder, contained items including a sickle, flint spearheads, core for making more spearheads, smooth stones possibly used as in a slingshot and gazelle toe bones used to make beads.
Dr Edwards’ research explored questions such as whether the toolkit belonged to an individual or a group of foragers – and whether it was used for short trips or longer journeys to seasonal sites.
‘Did an individual perform all the functions implied by the bag’s contents, that is to say flint knapping, point shaping, retooling, hunting, reaping and bead production?
‘And if so, were gathering activities – often attributed as a female role in hunter-gatherer societies – and those of hunting and tool-making – often ascribed to males – carried out by individuals of either gender?
Dr Edwards teaches the subjects Archaeology of the Middle East and Issues in Contemporary Archaeology. His major research for the past twenty years – dealing with the Levant during the Pleistocene and the origins of food production and human settlement – has been focused on the prehistory of Jordan’s East Jordan Valley, on a series of Lower, Middle, Upper and Epipalaeolithic, and Neolithic sites.
His other research interests include the archaeology of the very recent past, such as excavations at Como House in Melbourne, and the ‘historical dunny’ on La Trobe University’s Wildlife Reserve on the main Melbourne campus at Bundoora.
· Dr Edwards can be contacted on Email: p.edwards@latrobe.edu.au or
(American Center for Oriental Research, Amman:
0011-962-6-534-6117, ext. 513 or ext. 207)
Ancient Toolkit Gives Glimpse of Prehistoric Life
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Dec. 13, 2007: Before the end of the last ice age, a hunter-gatherer left a bag of tools near the wall of a roundhouse residence, where archaeologists have now found the collection 14,000 years later.
The tool set – one of the most complete and well preserved of its kind – provides an intriguing glimpse of the daily life of a prehistoric hunter-gatherer.
The contents, as described to Discovery News by Phillip Edwards, a senior lecturer in the Archaeology Program at Melbourne's La Trobe University, show the owner of the bag was well equipped for obtaining meat and edible plants in the wild.
"There was a sickle for harvesting wild wheat or barley, a cluster of flint spearheads, a flint core for making more spearheads, some smooth stones (maybe slingshots), a large stone (maybe for striking flint pieces off the flint core), a cluster of gazelle toe bones which were used to make beads, and part of a second bone tool," he said.
Edwards outlines the finds, attributed to the Natufian culture from a site called Wadi Hammeh 27 in Jordan, in the latest issue of Antiquity.
He believes the tools were enclosed in a hide or wickerwork bag with a strap that would have been worn over the shoulder. Such bags rarely had compartments, so the owner probably protected valuable items by wrapping them in rolls of bark or leather before placing them at the bottom of the bag.
The sickle, constructed out of two carefully grooved horn pieces, was fitted with color-matched tan and grey bladelets. It would have been a marvel of form and function for its day and is the only tool of its kind ever linked to the Natufian people.
The rest of the items were designed to immobilize and then kill game such as aurochs, red deer, hares, storks, partridges, owls, tortoises and the major source of meat -- gazelles.
"A lone hunter or a group of hunters might wait for gazelles to cross their path while waiting behind a low 'hide' made of twigs and brush," Edwards explained.
"They might have worked on making bone beads to wile away the time. Then a hunter could get off a shot while the animals were off their guard. A first shot might wound, but not kill, and then a hunter or a group of them will track the wounded animal."
He added, "We don't know if Natufian hunters had the bow and arrow, or just spears."
The mountain gazelles targeted by the Near Eastern hunters probably weighed between 39 and 55 pounds, so a strong adult "could carry an entire carcass over his shoulders without much trouble."
But the bag's owner wasn't necessarily a man; women are thought to have been in charge of plant gathering. The tools, therefore, either belonged to a woman hunter-gatherer, or work activities were more gender-blind than thought during prehistoric times, Edwards theorized.
Francois Valla, director of the French Research Center in Jerusalem and a noted archaeologist, told Discovery News that similar ancient clusters of tools have been excavated, but this latest one is "the most spectacular of them all."
"The clustering of these items is due to a decision made by some Natufian individual," Valla said. "As such, it is a rare testimony of the behavior of a person 14,000 years ago."
The toolkit's showpiece item, its double-bladed sickle, is now on display in the museum of the Faculty of Archaeology & Anthropology at Jordan's Yarmouk University.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/13/ancient-toolkit-print.html
Dr Edwards can be contacted on Tel: (03) 9479 1978 or Email: p.edwards@latrobe.edu.au