Saturday, May 1, 2010

Nahal Hadera V

I have only three photos this week, as the site, while interesting, was hard to photograph. I read about Nahal Hadera V in a book that I will talk more about next week. It's a small but (I found it) interesting site near Hefsiba and Hadera. The site was excavated seriously by TA university in the late 90s and is attributed to the Kebaran culture from something like 22500-17000 (yes thousand) years ago. This was around the end of the last ice age. I found an approximate pointer to the site and set out on my own this morning. I wandered around in the bush and found nothing. As I was about to leave disappointed, I saw the corrugated iron covering so popular around here for protecting sites. Score.

This is the view from the site. The Hadera power station looks like a Pink Floyd album cover, all it needs is the flying pig.

There was one side of a pit exposed. You can see the enormous amount of flint sticking out of the section (all those white stone like things). That's completely cool. Of course, I never touched the section, you have to leave it for some future archaeologist to work on. There was plenty of flint laying on the path that led to where I parked my car. Funny I never noticed any on the way in looking for the site, once I found the site I saw flint everywhere.

This is what the pit looks like. Quite sad actually. I am sure people come in all the time and look for nice lithic artefacts. It's amazing that the site is so old. They also did a archaeozoological study on the faunal remains at the site and found that the two most popular species were mountain gazelles and fallow deer. The book says it was quite a big site by paleolithic standards (at least 500 sq. M).

I spent a while looking at the lithics in the sections and just enjoyed having found the site. I suppose the sea must have been a way off in those days, just as the ice age was ending. I wonder where they got the raw flint to make their tools from. I did not see much in the way of rocks around. Hmmm, I suppose I should do more reading.

Very cool indeed.

9 comments:

Dima said...

Hi!
I tried to find the Nahal Hadera V site and has not succeed. Could you post some visible mark? As I understand it is located about one km from Nahal Hadera and 500 m from Kvish 2.
Thank you in advance

blackpetero said...

OK Dima you need to park in Hefisiba I have attached a link below. Once you park in the sand on the right hand side of the street (opposite the houses), walk up the hill towards the water tower (which you can see from kvish 2). 10 meters past the water tower you will see the ditch.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Kaf+Het+Beiyar,+Hadera,+Israel&sll=32.459886,34.8985&sspn=0.004001,0.008572&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Kaf+Het+Beiyar,+Hadera,+Israel&t=h&z=16

Please treat the site with respect :-) It is quite wonderful.

Dima said...

Thank you very much!

Dima said...

Hi!
Thanks, I found it :)
As you asked about source of the flint,the guys think it was obtained from Mount Carmel (http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/paleo_0153-9345_1978_num_4_1_4229)

blackpetero said...

Thanks for the pointer to the paper Dima. I will read it. I really liked the site and would like to know more about the period in general.

Dima said...

Maybe, you will be interested in the following paper, too: http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/info/ran_barkai/VIII.pdf
and some additional reading is listed in http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/projects/proj_nahal_hadera.html

Dima said...

Maybe, you will be interested in the following paper, too: http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/info/ran_barkai/VIII.pdf
and some additional reading is listed in http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/projects/proj_nahal_hadera.html

blackpetero said...

Thanks Dima, I have added them to my reading list :-) The text in the TAU project page (by Barkai and Gopher) looks similar to what I read in "The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land" which is where I found the initial pointer to the site. Are there more of these sites you know of?

Dima said...

I think I know the same excavated sites that you do. However, there exist a lot of interesting spots where apparently nobody dig yet. For example, I found a site at pardesim where soil is full with small pieces of mosaic and ceramics. I found a nice upper millstone of roman hand mill there :). At 2 km from the place, there is a hill where a settlement was partially excavated. Apparently, the excavation was stopped but some walls were excavated. Also, there was a settlement at sea shore at 2 km from the Nahal Hadera V. It was not excavated but soil at the hill is rich with pieces of ceramics, mosaics and marble.