Located 15 minutes south of Haifa, Israel, is an ongoing Prehistoric archaeological site on the side of the Carmel Mountain. Misliya is dated from 400 thousand to 175 thousand years ago, the Middle and Lower Paleolithic periods. There is inhabitation by people, mostly Mousterian, who lived in a large "bell-shaped" cave. The cave has since collapsed and all that remains is a slight outcropping of rock above and a large ledge which the site sits on. This year, 2005, is the third year the site has been excavated by a group from Haifa University, headed by Mina Evron.
The site is sponsored by Dan David. He has sponsored the site for the last three seasons. Everyone on the site recieved these awesome shirts. This is Ran, modeling one of our awesomely kewl shirts. It's the third shirt I have so far from sites. Hopefully I'll get more soon. Everyone on the site got a shirt so we can share the happiness of archaeology and learning about the past.
The site contains several squares and several deep holes that are being excavated. One is deep enough to necessitate a ladder to climb down. The archaeologist in this particular hole is using a jackhammer to dig through the bedrock.
There are two groups working at Misliya: the group actually excavating, and a group in the lab. Both are equally important.
At the actual site, which is a five minute drive north from the lab and a ten-minute climb up the mountain, the team excavates a few squares at a time and information is recorded. Any artifacts are also recorded and sent back to the lab. The excavation group makes all the on-site recordings, such as depth within the soil, postioning of artifacts, soil color and makeup and any other important information.
All artifacts larger than 2.5 centimeters are recorded in the place they are found ("in-situ"). The coordinates of the artifact, length, direction, angle, etc are written in a notebook for each square, the artifact is bagged and labeled, and a pin is placed where the artifact was found.
They are then sent to the lab along with soil from all the squares. The soil is washed in a large container with two mesh buckets. The top bucket prevents large artifacts from going through, and a bottom bucket (with finer mesh) lets through only the dirty soil and prevents smaller artifacts from passing through.
Normally, anything that goes through the bottom screen is washed away. Sometimes a square's soil is fine-screened so that tiny artifacts (such as very small fish and rodent bones, or natural materials such as seeds) can be kept and examined.
The artifacts are set in the sun to dry and a few archaeologists separate, or "pick" through them. All artifacts are sorted into three categories: flint/rock artifacts, bone artifacts, and "other". "Other" can mean any ceramics, which at this time peroid would be very odd to find, shell, charcoal or clay concretions, and anything interesting or unusual.
The artifacts get tagged and bagged for further inspection by either a student who identifies the bones and what animals they came from, others who examine the flint for lithic tools or evidence of tool production, or for any other students or researchers who are working on a project involving the artifacts.The larger artifacts are also washed and given numbers. The flint artifacts are each given an individual number, which is written on the flint and then everything is put in individual bags and labeled again.
The bones are sorted into two categories: unidentifiable and identifiable. A student from the university uses these bones to identify the type of animals and numbers of animals that were consumed by the people living at Misliya. He also picks out bones he believes can be identified, and treats them with an acid bath to remove breccia, a hardening of soil, from them. Each artifact is put into a section of a plastic tray and placed in the acid until the breccia is removed; the bones are ready to be taken out when they stop bubbling. They are washed in water and then in a base to neutralize the acid. The bones are then dried. After removel of all the breccia, it is much easier to identify the bones.
The identification of animal (and possibly human) bones is important because it tells us much about the people at the site. By counting certain types of bones, such as the long bone, or leg bone, an archaeologist can see how animals of that type were hunted (in some cases domesticated). These bones are unique in that each animal would only have one of these bones, say a front right leg bone, so if five were found, that means they came from five separate animals. By counting the bones, archaeologists know how much of the diet those animals made up, what type of hunting/gathering they were practicing (or not, if they were farmers), what kind of animals were in abundance at the time, ... One can also see markings on the bones that give clues as to butchering techniques and what tools the people used. Quality of the bones can show how healthy the animals were. If they were domesticated and unhealthy, this suggests poor living conditions, and much more. The bones, and flints or tools, are finally photographed.
So far, we are stil working on the dating of Misliya and what actually went on there, but the end results should be very interesting.
The site sits on the side of Mt Carmel with a beautiful view of the surrounding area and the Mediterranean Sea. On a clear day, one can see the two towers in Hadera about twenty minutes away, as well as Haifa, in the opposite direction.
The lab is located at the Nahal Me'arot (Valley of the Caves) Nature Preserve. The preserve contains hiking paths. There is a falcon breeding project ongoing near the main building. Along the side of Mount Carmel, there are four other caves of great importance to Israeli as well as world history. For a small fee, a person or group can enter the cave area with a personal tour guide.
Tabun, the highest on the mountain, may be the most important prehistoric site in all of Israel, as it is the site that contains continuous occupation for the longest period of time. Most sites are only one or two periods, or have periodic shifts in living. Tabun was first discovered in the beginning of the 20th century, and has been excavated since the 1930s. A Neanderthal woman, believed to have existed at the same time as AMH (Anatomically Modern Humans) at nearby Skhul Cave.
Nahal Me'arot also contains El Wad. There are actually two areas of the site, one a cave and one on a terrace outside the cave. El Wad is a Natufian site. The Natufians were the last peoples to have stopped hunting and gathering, and settle down to farm. Located here are over 100 burials with signs of ritual burial practices. The cave is still active, with small stalagmites and stalactites growing, and a small population of bats. The preserve gives a tour of this cave, complete with a walk-through tour and movie about the cave peoples at the end.
Gamal is a small cave that serves as a display of what a cave "family" might have looked like. There are examples of tools and the way the cave peoples lived set up by the nature preserve.
The last cave is called Skhul, or Cave of the Kids. This cave is dated at about 92,000 years ago. There were thirteen burials excavated here. The cave is very small and located farther back in the preserve, about a five minute walk from the main building. This cave is important because the archaeologists working there found skeletons of Modern Homo Sapiens, while at Tabun there was Neanderthals at the same time period. The archaeologists believe this shows that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens were two seperate type of people who were not descended from each other.
The side of the Skhul cave has interesting features, like the "face" that can be seen carved into the rock on the right side. Can you see it too?