Evidence of ritual breakage of a ground stone tool at the Late Natufian site of Hilazon Tachtit cave (12,000 years ago).

Destruction of valuables is a common behavior in human history. Ethnographic data show the polysemic, but fundamentally symbolic, nature of this act. Yet, research aimed at exploring symbolic destruction in prehistoric societies has underlined the difficulties in establishing unambiguous evidence for such behaviour. We present here the analysis of a basalt tool fragment which provides evidence for intentional breakage associated with ritual activity 12,000 years ago. The tool fragment was part of a unique assemblage of grave goods deposited in a burial pit of a woman suggested to have been a shaman (Hilazon Tachtit cave, Southern Levant). The reconstruction of the artefact's life history through morphological, 3D, use wear, residue and contextual analyses suggest that: 1) the fragment was initially part of a shallow bowl used for mixing ash or lime with water; 2) the bowl was subsequently intentionally broken through flaking along multiple axes; 3) The bowl was not used after its breakage but placed in a cache before the interment of the deceased, accompanied with other special items. The broken bowl fragment underlines the ritualistic nature of the act of breakage in the Natufian society. The research presented in this paper provides an important window into Natufian ritual behaviour during the critical period of transformation to agricultural communities. In addition, our results offer new insight into practices related to intentional destruction of valuables associated with death-related ceremonies at the end of the Palaeolithic.

The development of plant food processing in the Levant: insights from use-wear analysis of Early Epipalaeolithic ground stone tools.

In recent years, the study of percussive, pounding and grinding tools has provided new insights into human evolution, more particularly regarding the development of technology enabling the processing and exploitation of plant resources. Some of these studies focus on early evidence for flour production, an activity frequently perceived as an important step in the evolution of plant exploitation. The present paper investigates plant food preparation in mobile hunter-gatherer societies from the Southern Levant. The analysis consists of a use-wear study of 18 tools recovered from Ohalo II, a 23 000-year-old site in Israel showing an exceptional level of preservation. Our sample includes a slab previously interpreted as a lower implement used for producing flour, based on the presence of cereal starch residues. The use-wear data we have obtained provide crucial information about the function of this and other percussive tools at Ohalo II, as well as on investment in tool manufacture, discard strategies and evidence for plant processing in the Late Pleistocene. The use-wear analysis indicates that the production of flour was a sporadic activity at Ohalo II, predating by thousands of years the onset of routine processing of plant foods.