Composite Sickles and Cereal Harvesting Methods at 23,000-Years-Old Ohalo II, Israel

Use-wear analysis of five glossed flint blades found at Ohalo II, a 23,000-years-old fisher-hunter-gatherers' camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Northern Israel, provides the earliest evidence for the use of composite cereal harvesting tools. The wear traces indicate that tools were used...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2016-11, Vol.11 (11), p.e0167151-e0167151
Main Authors: Groman-Yaroslavski, Iris, Weiss, Ehud, Nadel, Dani
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology, Cultural
Archaeology
Biology and Life Sciences
Cereals
Crop Production - history
Crop Production - instrumentation
Crop Production - methods
Crops
Cultivation
Cutlery
Domestication
Earth Sciences
Edible Grain
Engineering and Technology
Evolution
Flint
Grain cultivation
Grasses
Grinding tools
Harvest
Harvesting
History, Ancient
Humans
Inserts
Israel
Knives
Methods
Neolithic
Research and Analysis Methods
Sickles
Social Sciences
Tool wear
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Use-wear analysis of five glossed flint blades found at Ohalo II, a 23,000-years-old fisher-hunter-gatherers' camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Northern Israel, provides the earliest evidence for the use of composite cereal harvesting tools. The wear traces indicate that tools were used for harvesting near-ripe semi-green wild cereals, shortly before grains are ripe and disperse naturally. The studied tools were not used intensively, and they reflect two harvesting modes: flint knives held by hand and inserts hafted in a handle. The finds shed new light on cereal harvesting techniques some 8,000 years before the Natufian and 12,000 years before the establishment of sedentary farming communities in the Near East. Furthermore, the new finds accord well with evidence for the earliest ever cereal cultivation at the site and the use of stone-made grinding implements.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0167151