Tinshemet Cave Excavation 2018
Kia ora, It has certainly been an eventful last few weeks! Last month I participated in an excavation at Tinshemet Cave, a Levantine Middle Palaeolithic archaeological site located in central Israel. The Arabic name for the site is Mugh รข ret al-Watwat ('Cave of the Bat'; Stekelis 1942 ), for reasons illustrated in the following video: As a (very basic!) background to the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic (the cited sources provide additional detail for those that are interested): The Levant is a region comprising of roughly the modern countries and territories of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. The Levantine Middle Palaeolithic spans a period from around 250,000 - 45,000 years ago ( Nishiaki and Akazawa 2018 ; Shea 2001 , 2003 ). The fossil record shows that during this period both Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ) and early anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) were present in the Levant. The archaeological signature of this region and per