A pilot project investigating archaeological surface material in Iraq's Western Desert recently uncovered numerous Old and Middle Paleolithic finds, including various Stone Age artifacts. These finds were enough for archaeologist Ella Egberts to declare the research work a "great success," the Vrije Universiteit Brussel said in a statement.
The team discovered seven Paleolithic sites located in an area measuring only ten by nineteen kilometers. The excavations revealed one site on the surface, which is a dried-up lake bed with a dried-up riverbed crisscrossing the landscape. Egberts collected more than 850 artifacts from the site, including hand axes that may be as old as 1.5 million years.
"Other places also deserve an equally thorough systematic investigation," says Egberts, "which will undoubtedly yield the same number of stone tools."
The stone tools proved to be quite interesting, considering that the archaeologists who discovered them were simply sifting through the surface and not digging deep.
Along with ancient hand axes, the team found much later Levallois flint tools.
Considered more sophisticated than hand axes, they represent hand tools dating from 300,000 to 50,000 years ago. In the 19th century, Levallois flint tools were mistakenly attributed to a separate "Levallois culture". However, subsequent studies have shown that their distribution was much wider, covering different archaeological cultures and an extensive time span.
By examining the distribution of sites and studying the geomorphologic history of the area, Egberts and her team found signs of landscape use by early humans. According to Egberts, expanding the research to a larger area will allow scientists to take a fresh look at
evolution and human behavior in the Arabian Peninsula.
According to Egberts, research in Iraq has been limited in recent decades due to instability in the region. However, this particular study, which was funded by the British Institute for Iraqi Studies, had no such problems.
"With the exception of the numerous checkpoints, everything has been good and we have been able to get the job done without any problems," she says. "The people here are friendly, and it's a pleasure to work in Iraq."
The Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage encouraged the team to continue their work, which Egberts plans to do. Once she is able to secure the necessary funding, she hopes to reconstruct pictures of Pleistocene environmental changes and early human presence and behavior in the Western Desert, including the use of hand axes and the Levallois industry.