Nuts, nut cracking, and pitted stones at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel

Abstract

The Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (Israel) has revealed a unique association of edible nuts with pitted hammers and anvils. Located in the Dead Sea rift, on the boundary between the Arabian and African plates, the site dates to the Early-Middle Pleistocene, oxygen isotope stage 19. In a series of strata, seven species of nuts, most of which can be cracked open only by a hard hammer, were uncovered. Five of the species are extant terrestrial nuts, and two are aquatic nuts now extinct in the Levant. In addition, the site yielded an assemblage of pitted hammers and anvils similar in pit morphology to those used by chimpanzees and contemporary hunter-gatherers. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that a site has offered both paleobotanical and lithic evidence of plant foods eaten by early hominins and technologies used for processing these foods. The evidence also sheds light on the structure of the community: ethnographic analogies suggest that mixedgender groups may have been active on the shores of paleoLake Hula.

Figure 1

Pitted stones at GBY. (a) Size of stones in millimeters (x and y axes) and number of pits per stone (diameter of bubble). (b) Size of pits (x and y axes) and their depth (diameter of bubble) in millimeters.

Figure 2

Typology of pitted stones at GBY. (1) Incipient pits on flat basalt cobble (layer II-6 L 6). (2) Shallow pit on round broken basalt cobble (layer “Unconformity”). (3) Large deep pit on broken basalt hammer (layer II-6 L 4b). (4) Small deep pit on basalt flake (layer II-6 L 4b). (4a) Cluster of small deep pits on angular basalt fragment (layer II-6 L 4b).