<< Text Pages >> Ayn Qasiyya Burials - Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature in Jordan

Submitted by Andy B on Tuesday, 01 February 2011  Page Views: 5973

DigsSite Name: Ayn Qasiyya Burials Alternative Name: Ayn Qasiyya 1
Country: Jordan
NOTE: This site is 3.628 km away from the location you searched for.
Type: Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature

Latitude: 31.834399N  Longitude: 36.818905E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 4
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'Ayn Qasiyya is an early epipaleolithic site located in the Azraq Oasis of Jordan, approximately 100 kilometers east of Amman. A suite of AMS dates on associated charcoal establishes the date of this burial between 18800 and 30400 cal BP, making 'Ayn Qasiyya the oldest securely dated human remains in Jordan recovered to date.

Channel fill at the site indicates that the early Epipaleolihtic, Natufian and PPNB (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) occupations have occurred in the region, intact, or at least partially intact deposits at the site are restricted to early Epipaleolithic.

Stone tools at the site include microburins, arched backed bladelts and piquant triedre; these are typical of Early Epipaleolithic sites in the Azraq Basin and the Levant in general.

Source: About.com. The full paper "An Early Epipalaeolithic sitting burial from the Azraq Oasis, Jordan" is downloadable here

(Note, have listed this as 'natural feature' as it doesn't appear there is an associated burial monument. With thanks to Moti for the link to the paper)

Note: Unique discovery of fox remains buried with human, new discovery at the oldest securely dated human remains in Jordan
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Nearby Images from Flickr
Little Crake adult female Aqaba Bird Reserve_8412
Little Crake (Zapornia parva) Azraq, Jordan_8370
Glossy Ibis Azraq Jordan_8515
Common Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita, tristis?) Azraq, Jordan_8575
Azraq dawn mist_Jordan_2743
Bluethroat morning sun Jordan_8541

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 8.3km NNW 340° Azraq Geoglyph* Stone Circle
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"Ayn Qasiyya Burials" | Login/Create an Account | 5 News and Comments
  
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Re: Ayn Qasiyya Burials by davidmorgan on Sunday, 17 August 2014
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See also Rescue Excavations at Epipalaeolithic Ayn Qasiyya: report on the 2005 season.
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Ancient oasis sheds light on early humans by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 27 September 2011
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In the drying marshlands of the Azraq oasis lie the remnants of one of the earliest communities to roam the Levant.

Ayn Qasiyya - an Epipalaeolithic site dating back some 20,000 years located in the Azraq Wetlands Reserve - has yielded dozens of secrets from the prehistoric past and the oldest human remains ever uncovered in Jordan.

According to climactic records, eastern Jordan and Syria was arid and dry with little rainfall, leading many experts to believe that the southeastern Levant was incapable of supporting early human settlements.

Despite the inhospitable conditions, recent excavations at Ayn Qasiyya and nearby Qasr Kharaneh have proven otherwise, revealing that the basin supported some of the largest communities at the time and that one of the most remote desert oases was once a thriving, densely populated region.

Between 2005 and 2007, University College London (UCL), University of Cambridge and Department of Antiquities (DoA) teams unearthed a treasure trove of data shedding light on one of the earliest communities in Jordan, according to Tobias Richter, project director and University of Copenhagen professor.

The now nearly parched wetlands of Azraq would be almost unrecognisable some 20,000 years ago, according to archaeological records.

Excess water flowed into the Azraq basin, providing a life source for the plethora of animals and multiple human settlements that called the area home. Gazelle, wild ass and cattle roamed the wetlands and served as a major food source for the earliest communities. Almond trees bloomed along the oasis’ edge and provided firewood and an additional food source for Epipalaeolithic humans.

People at the time were hunter-gatherers, living in semi-settled communities around the oasis. Predecessors to the Neolithic humans who would give rise to the first settled communities, Epipalaeolithic humans such as the settlers at Azraq dabbled in agriculture, hunted extensively and developed social patterns that would later develop into villages and cities.

The results of a series of excavations, which have been published in several academic journals, revealed that the people of Ayn Qasiyya were skilled craftsmen, fashioning microliths, long-blade knives and scrapers from flint used for hunting, hide skinning and drilling.

Human burial

Amidst stone tools and animal bones, DoA and UCL teams uncovered one of the most important Epipalaeolithic discoveries to date: the complete skeleton of a male in his 30s, the seventh complete human remains ever uncovered from the period and the second in Jordan.

“There is a very sparse record of human populations in the region during this period,” Richter said in an e-mail to The Jordan Times.

What makes the discovery unique is not only the age - radiocarbon dating places the burial at some 20,000 years old - but the position in which the body was placed.

The deceased’s legs were splayed wide apart in a crouching position, with the torso and skull collapsed together, leading experts to believe that the body was bound in an upright sitting position, the first such sitting burial to be discovered in Jordan.

Experts believe the people of Ayn Qasiyya most likely left the bodies of their deceased exposed to the elements, providing a possible explanation for the lack of existing human remains dating back to the period.

Human remains uncovered at nearby Qasr Kharaneh, which is currently being excavated as part of the greater Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project, however, were uncovered in a tomb-like structure.

The differences in burial may be attributed to one of the earliest cases of class distinction.

“Perhaps burial was preserved for people considered in some way special, while 'normal' people were given over to exposure, but it is very difficult to speculate,” Richter said.

What

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What are Epipaleolithic and Natufian? by Andy B on Tuesday, 01 February 2011
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Epipaleolithic is a term used for the "final Upper Palaeolithic industries occurring at the end of the final glaciation which appear to merge technologically into the Mesolithic".

The term is usually confused with Mesolithic, and the two are sometimes used as synonyms. Yet, when a distinction is made, Epipaleolithic is used for those cultures that were not much affected by the ending of the Ice Age (like the Natufian culture of Western Asia) and the term Mesolithic is reserved for Western Europe.
(I had to look this up!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epipaleolithic

The Natufian culture was a Mesolithic culture that existed in the Levant, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian communities are possibly the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian
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Was the fox prehistoric man’s best friend? by Andy B on Tuesday, 01 February 2011
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Was the fox prehistoric man’s best friend?

Early humans may have preferred the fox to the dog as an animal companion, new archaeological findings suggest. Researchers analysing remains at a prehistoric burial ground in Jordan have uncovered a grave in which a fox was buried with a human, before part of it was then transferred to an adjacent grave.

The University of Cambridge-led team believes that the unprecedented case points to some sort of emotional attachment between human and fox. Their paper, published January 26, suggests that the fox may have been kept as a pet and was being buried to accompany its master, or mistress, to the afterlife.

If so, it marks the first known burial of its kind and suggests that long before we began to hunt foxes using dogs, our ancestors were keeping them as pets – and doing so earlier than their canine relatives.

The cemetery, at Uyun-al-Hammam, in northern Jordan, is about 16,500 years old, which makes the grave 4,000 years older than the earliest known human-dog burial and 7,000 years earlier than anything similar in Europe involving a fox.

Writing in the open-access journal, PLoS One, the researchers also suggest that this early example of human-animal burial may be part of a bigger picture of growing cultural sophistication that has typically been associated with the farming societies of the Neolithic era, thousands of years later.

Sadly for fox-lovers, however, the relationship between man and that particular beast was probably short-lived. The paper also says it is unlikely that foxes were ever domesticated in full and that, despite their early head start, their recruitment as a friendly household pet fell by the wayside in later millennia as their human masters took to the more companionable dog instead.

“The burial site provides intriguing evidence of a relationship between humans and foxes which pre-dates any comparable example of animal domestication,” Dr Lisa Maher, from the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, said.

“What we appear to have found is a case where a fox was killed and buried with its owner. Later, the grave was reopened for some reason and the human’s body was moved. But because the link between the fox and human had been significant, the fox was moved as well, so that the person, or people, would still be accompanied by it in the afterlife.”

Read more, with photos and extracts from the paper at http://www.pasthorizons.com/index.php/archives/01/2011/was-the-fox-prehistoric-mans-best-friend#ixzz1CS2HNdkE
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