ABSTRACT
Modern humans became established in the Near East by the Late Pleistocene, around 55-35,000 years ago. In addition to rock shelters and caves, several important sites reveal human settlement in ‘open air’ locations and highlight increasing sedentism and growing communities in the Levant. e site of Ohalo II, dated to 20,000 bc, is a long-lived settlement of oval huts on the shore of Lake Lisan in northern Israel. e huts at Ohalo II were built of wood and grasses and were destroyed by re, leaving an invaluable record of the more than 100 plant species used by this Epipalaeolithic community, as well as the bones of gazelle, hare, birds and fallow deer which they hunted. Neve David in Israel and Uyun al-Hammam in Jordan are also early sites which indicate the establishment of long-lived base camp sites at the boundary of dierent ecological zones, a strategy which providing the inhabitants with access to a broader range of resources. Very early
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stone structures occupied between 18,000 and 14,000 bc have also been excavated at Kharaneh IV, in Jordan; ongoing excavations at this site stand to reveal more.
