Shuqba is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate

Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate

The Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate is one of 16 Governorates of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It covers a large part of the central West Bank, on the northern border of the Jerusalem Governorate. Its district capital or muhfaza is the city of al-Bireh.According to the Palestinian Central...

, located 17.71 kilometers northwest of the city of Ramallah

Ramallah

Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank located 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority...

 in Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

. It is bounded from the southwest by the village of Qibya

Qibya

Qibya is a Palestinian village in the West Bank, located northwest of Ramallah and exactly north of the large Israeli city of Modi'in. It is part of the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, and according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, it had a population of approximately 4,901 in...

, from the southeast by Shabatin, from the northeast by Deir Abu Mish'al and from the north by the Israeli settlement

Israeli settlement

An Israeli settlement is a Jewish civilian community built on land that was captured by Israel from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory by the international community. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank...

 of Ofarim.

Shuqba has a total area of 13,990 dunam

Dunam

A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...

s and the built-up area comprises 616 dunams. (PCBS), Shuqba was home to approximately 4,497 inhabitants in 2007.

Dorothy Garrod

Dorothy Garrod

Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod CBE was a British archaeologist who was the first woman to hold an Oxbridge chair, partly through her pioneering work on the Palaeolithic period. Her father was Sir Archibald Garrod, the physician.-Life:Born in Oxford, she attended Newnham College, Cambridge...

 studied the transition of Mesolithic

Mesolithic

The Mesolithic is an archaeological concept used to refer to certain groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic....

 to Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 culture represented in a cave

Shuqba cave

Shuqba cave is an archaeological site near the town of Shuqba in the western Judean Mountains.-Location:Shuqba cave is located on the northern bank of Wadi en-Natuf. This wadi is a kilometer south of the town of Shuqba, and runs west towards the Mediterranean coastal plain. The town is 28 km...

 on the northern bank of Wadi an-Natuf near Shuqba in 1929, the name "Natufian Culture

Natufian culture

The Natufian culture was a Mesolithic culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture...

" was then coined to describe the inhabitants of the southern Levant at this crucial juncture in human history.