Rethinking the Humalian industry

Recent research reveals that the production of elongated blanks using different flaking techniques is an important part of the Early Middle Palaeolithic (EMP) industries in Near Eastern sites dated between 250 and 160 ka ago. The excavation at Hummal located in the arid steppe of Central Syria produced blade industries located in the stratigraphy between the Yabrudian and Levalloiso-Mousterian and this sequence is dated to about 200 ky. This paper presents data on the Hummalian culture from its discovery in 1980 to the systematic excavation of in situ archaeological layers between 1997 and 2010. Today the Hummalian industry is seen as a single, but very complex reduction strategy related to both the Laminar and the Levallois-like system of debitage. It is a unique reduction system containing diverse types of core volume management within which blanks of different morphologies have been produced from a single core using a direct, hammer percussion. Though, the Hummalian still shares many techno-typological similarities with the others laminar, lithic assemblages found on the Early Middle Palaeolithic sites in Levant, the same chronological and stratigraphical position and similar land-use strategies. As the EMP blade industries in Levant are preceded by the Acheulo-Yabrudian techno-complexes, the shift between both these lithic complexes, already seen in their chronological boundary, may also imply a technological discontinuity and possibly differing human populations.