Shuqba cave is an archaeological site

Archaeological site

An archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved , and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological record.Beyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a 'site' can vary widely,...

 near the town of Shuqba

Shuqba

Shuqba is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, located 17.71 kilometers northwest of the city of Ramallah in Palestine...

 in the western Judean Mountains

Judean Mountains

The Judaean Mountains, ;, also Judaean Hills and Hebron Hills is a mountain range in Israel and the West Bank where Jerusalem and several other biblical cities are located. The mountains reach a height of 1,000 m.-Geography:...

.

Location

Shuqba cave is located on the northern bank of Wadi en-Natuf. This wadi

Wadi

Wadi is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some cases, it may refer to a dry riverbed that contains water only during times of heavy rain or simply an intermittent stream.-Variant names:...

 is a kilometer south of the town of Shuqba, and runs west towards the Mediterranean coastal plain

Coastal plain

A coastal plain is an area of flat, low-lying land adjacent to a seacoast and separated from the interior by other features. One of the world's longest coastal plains is located in eastern South America. The southwestern coastal plain of North America is notable for its species diversity...

. The town is 28 km northwest of Jerusalem. This area is within the Judean Hills.

History of exploration

The site was briefly investigated in 1924 by Father Alexis Mallon, who suggested that the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem take responsibility for excavating the cave. During the course of one season 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...

, with a team of local workers, placed a trench in the central chamber, as well as a small sounding in Chamber III.. She identified an archaeological sequence which included a Late "Levallois-Mousterian" layer. It also included a 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....

 layer that she subsequently named "Natufian"

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...

. This was the first time that a Natufian layer had been found as part of a stratified deposit. This layer contained charcoal

Charcoal

Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...

 traces and a previously unknown microlith

Microlith

A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. It is produced from either a small blade or a larger blade-like piece of flint by abrupt or truncated retouching, which leaves a very typical piece of waste,...

ic flint tool industry characterized by crescent-shaped lunate

Lunate

Lunate is a term meaning crescent or moon-shaped. In the specialized terminology of lithic reduction, a lunate flake is a small, crescent-shaped flake removed from a stone tool during the process of pressure flaking....

s. Garrod's team found worked bone objects. The fauna was dominated by gazelle

Gazelle

A gazelle is any of many antelope species in the genus Gazella, or formerly considered to belong to it. Six species are included in two genera, Eudorcas and Nanger, which were formerly considered subgenera...

, and also included the domestic dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

. The remains of 45 human skeletons, mostly fragmentary, allowed insights into a range of distinctive mortuary practices.

Related sites

Shuqba cave falls within the broader prehistoric landscape of the Wadi en-Natuf. While most of the lithic material in the immediate (1-km) survey along area along the wadi's north bank is concentrated around the cave, debitage

Debitage

The term debitage refers to all the waste material produced during lithic reduction and the production of chipped stone tools. This assemblage includes, but is not limited to, different kinds of lithic flakes, shatter, and production errors and rejects....

has been found at a small natural terrace 200 m south of the cave. Surface collection suggests that this material derives from the cave and from the 1928 spoil, the bulk of which has been washed down the slope. A terrace is visible today, but it was constructed as part of modern agricultural practices.