Nubian Levallois Cores from MIS 5 Alluvial Terraces in the Negev Desert: New Insights into the Middle Paleolithic in the Arid Regions of the Southern Levant

The Negev region is a part of the great desert belt of north Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, a physical and environmental barrier between eastern Africa and southwest Asia. The proximity of the Negev Desert to the Eastern Mediterranean ecological zone to its north, makes it an interesting study area for identifying movements of people and ideas between these areas, in particular during interglacial periods such as Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS 5). Not until recently, the archaeological data associated with this stage in the Negev was quite limited, but new studies point to a complex scenario in which several lithic traditions coexisted. One of them was dominated by the Nubian Levallois technology, that is seen by some as a cultural proxy for population movement from Afro-Arabia into the Levant. A comprehensive geoarchaeological survey conducted during the years 2017–2020 revealed dozens of previously unknown Middle Paleolithic findspots in the central and the southern parts of the Negev. Amongst the new findspots, sites with Nubian Levallois cores were identified. The geomorphological contexts of most of these findspots correspond to MIS 5 terraces, as supported by several luminescence ages. A comparison between surveyed sites and excavated MIS 5 sites from the Negev shows differences in the composition of the lithic assemblages. The surface sites include a combination of Nubian cores, centripetal and bidirectional Levallois knapping modes, while the excavated sites are more homogeneous and dominated by centripetal and bidirectional Levallois, or Nubian Levallois, but not both together. We propose that the Nubian core technology in the Negev is part of a distinct lithic tradition, probably originated in regions to the south and the east, whereas the centripetal and bidirectional Levallois are integral part of the known Middle Paleolithic lithic traditions of the Mediterranean ecological zone to the north and likely represent their expansion south into the Negev Desert.