CLEAVERS IN EARLY PALAEOLITHIC INDUSTRIES IN ISRAEL

David Gilead

The existence of cleavers in Early Palaeolithic industries in Israel has often been overlooked in the prehistoric literature. F. Bordes, for example, in his authoritative work on Early and Middle Palaeolithic typology, while arguing with Tixier about the geographical distribution of flake cleavers said that, outside of Africa, they occur in Western Europe and in India (1). He did not mention their existence in the Near East. In a recent comprehensive book on world prehistory (2) again there is no mention of cleavers in the Near East. Such omission is certainly no longer justified since by now Israel is one of the major areas in the distribution of this tool-type. Numerous cleavers were found in Israel, their typological variability and temporal distribution is not less than in the classic region of Africa. Moreover, since cleavers occur both in Africa and India, their presence in Israel, in the middle of the most obvious land route between those two regions, significantly increases the possibility that a systematic study may contribute towards assessing hypotheses of migrations, diffusion or independent evolution in those regions. However, a recurrent difficulty in such studies is a satisfactory chronology and typology and I cannot claim to have by. now solved these problems. The chronological problems of the Early Palaeolithic are outside the scope of this paper and all that needs to be said is that the dating in this article of the various industries is largely tentative. As to typology, neither Tixier's (3) North African, nor Kleindienst's (4) East African typological schemes did seem to me as fully satisfactory for the Near Eastern material. I have classified the material at my disposal into eight types (5) : Elsewhere, I have described the main Acheulian groups in the Near East (6) and in the following description of the cleavers I shall use the subdivisions made there.

Early Acheulian

At the Jordan Valley site of Ubeidiya (7) cleavers occur in the К 6 layer assemblage and account for с 2 % of the large shaped tools. One bifacially flaked basalt cleaver was published (8). Several spatulate-tipped basalt bifaces resembling ultra-convergent cleavers and a few cleaver flakes (these probably appear in the living-floor industries

too) occur as well (9). Similar cleaver types, and in about the same proportions (2 %-4 % of handaxe totals) are known from other sites of this time range such as the EF-HR site at Olduvai Gorge Bed II (10), at Natron (1 1) or in the Early Acheulian in Moroco (12).

Middle Acheulian

The Evron-Quarry occurrence is dated to pre-Tyrrhenian times (13). Archaeologically it is imperfectly known as yet, but I assume that it is later than Ubeidiya. Among the shaped artifacts there occur large, bifacial, chisel-like tipped tools made of flint (14). Two of them are illustrated in fig. 5. They are shaped by a hard striker, have sharp lateral edges with little secondary retouch, the butt is flaked but sometimes not tranchant. The implement in fig. 5, 1 is perhaps the best shaped example. The tip-end is formed cleaver-like, by two large intersecting flake scars one on each face. It is worked entirely on both faces ; some attempts were made to regularize the lateral edges ; the butt is well rounded and tranchant. Its maximal dimensions are : length — 212 mm, breadth — 1 10 mm, thickness — 70 mm. Other specimens of this type are over 150 mm long.

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