Gonen Sharon

Spheroids are one of the least understood lithic items yet are one of the most enduring, spanning from the Oldowan to the Middle Palaeolithic. Why and how they were made remains highly debated. We seek to address whether spheroids represent unintentional by-products of percussive tasks or if they were intentionally knapped tools with specific manufacturing goals. We apply novel three-dimensional analysis methods, including spherical harmonics and surface curvature, to 150 limestone spheroids from ‘Ubeidiya ( ca 1.4 Ma), presently the earliest Acheulean occurrence outside of Africa, to bring a new perspective to these enigmatic artefacts. We reconstruct the spheroid reduction sequence based on trends in their scar facets and geometry, finding that the spheroid makers at ‘Ubeidiya followed a premeditated reduction strategy. During their manufacture, the spheroids do not become smoother, but they become markedly more spherical. They approach an ideal sphere, a feat that likely required skilful knapping and a preconceived goal. Acheulean bifaces are currently thought to represent the earliest evidence of hominins imposing a premeditated, symmetrical shape on stone. The intentional production of sphere-like objects at ‘Ubeidiya similarly shows evidence of Acheulean hominins desiring and achieving intentional geometry and symmetry in stone.

The Hula Valley has two key Acheulian sites: Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY), a large flake Acheulian site with hundreds of basalt bifaces and a significant number of flint handaxes, and Ma'ayan Barukh (MB), where more than 3500 flint handaxes were collected. Over the last one million years, the valley was filled by alluvium and basalt flows, devoid of flint sources suitable for handaxe production. We conducted archaeological and geological surveys combined with an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry geochemical study to determine the source(s) of flint, comparing elemental compositions of handaxes from GBY and MB with those of different flint sources using a novel statistical method. The results demonstrate that Hula Valley Acheulian flint handaxes were derived from Eocene flint. For GBY, the nearest matching source for its small number of excavated handaxes is a secondary deposit of the Dishon streambed found ~8 km northwest of the site. A more likely source for both GBY and the thousands of MB handaxes is the Dishon flint extraction and reduction complex located 20 km to the west, a possibility also supported by the near absence of production waste flakes at the sites themselves. These findings support direct procurement strategy as early as the Lower Paleolithic.