Abu Madi(

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

:أبو ماضي) is a cluster of

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

tell mounds in Southern

Sinai Sinai commonly refers to: * Sinai Peninsula, Egypt * Mount Sinai, a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt * Biblical Mount Sinai, the site in the Bible where Moses received the Law of God Sinai may also refer to: * Sinai, South Dakota, a place ...

, Egypt. It is located east of

Saint Catherine's Monastery Saint Catherine's Monastery ( ar, دير القدّيسة كاترين; grc-gre, Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης), officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Katherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, ...

at the bottom of a

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

ridge. It was suggested to have been a seasonal encampment for groups of

hunter gatherers A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

and contained the remains of two major

settlement Settlement may refer to: *Human settlement, a community where people live *Settlement (structural), the distortion or disruption of parts of a building * Closing (real estate), the final step in executing a real estate transaction *Settlement (fin ...

s; Abu Madi I and Abu Madi III. Abi Madi I is a small site with the remains of a partially buried building containing deposits up to a depth of . Abu Madi III was an area of roughly that was excavated close to a large nearby boulder. Dwellings were found to have stone built

silo A silo (from the Greek σιρός – ''siros'', "pit for holding grain") is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store fermented feed known as silage, not to be confused with a grain bin, which is used t ...

s next to them. It was first excavated in the early 1980s by

Ofer Bar-Yosef Ofer Bar-Yosef ( he, עופר בר-יוסף; 29 August 1937 – 14 March 2020) was an Israeli archaeologist and anthropologist whose main field of study was the Palaeolithic period. From 1967 Bar-Yosef was Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at ...

Culture

The culture has been referred to as the Abu Madi Entity as it shows evidence of having retained

Natufian The Natufian culture () is a Late Epipaleolithic archaeological culture of the Levant, dating to around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction ...

characteristics of a temporary settlement, while being at least partly contemporary with the

PPNA Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) denotes the first stage of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in early Levantine and Anatolian Neolithic culture, dating to years ago, that is, 10,000–8,800 BCE. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and U ...

cultures of the Levant further to the North. It has been dated approximately 10100 to 9700 BP or from between 9660 to 9180 BC with calibrated datings ranging between c. 9750 and 7760 BC. Judging by these radiocarbon dates, Abu Madi has been suggested to be a form of late

Khiamian The Khiamian culture is a Neolithic archaeological culture of Southwest Asia, dating to the earliest part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), around 9,700 to 8,600 BC. It is primarily characterised by a distinctive type of stone arrowhead—t ...

culture. It has been suggested that the dwellings found housed small groups of

nuclear families A nuclear family, elementary family, cereal-packet family or conjugal family is a family group consisting of parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, the larger ...

continuing in the

style. A large number of chipped flints were recovered including a new type of

aerodynamic Aerodynamics, from grc, ἀήρ ''aero'' (air) + grc, δυναμική (dynamics), is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dyn ...

arrowhead An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, as well as to fulfill some special purposes such as sign ...

known as the Abu Madi Point characterised by elongated

oval An oval () is a closed curve in a plane which resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it is given a more precise definition, which may include either one or ...

s or

rhomboid Traditionally, in two-dimensional geometry, a rhomboid is a parallelogram in which adjacent sides are of unequal lengths and angles are non-right angled. A parallelogram with sides of equal length (equilateral) is a rhombus but not a rhomboid. ...

shapes, occasionally with a small

tang Tang or TANG most often refers to: * Tang dynasty * Tang (drink mix) Tang or TANG may also refer to: Chinese states and dynasties * Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) b ...

El Khiam El Khiam (الخیام) is an archaeological site near Wadi Khureitun in the Judaean Desert in the West Bank, on the shores of the Dead Sea. Archaeological finds at El Khiam show nearly continuous habitation by groups of hunters since the Mesolit ...

points were also found with deep concave bases and it has been suggested these arrowheads were used to hunt such animals as

gazelles A gazelle is one of many antelope species in the genus ''Gazella'' . This article also deals with the seven species included in two further genera, ''Eudorcas'' and ''Nanger'', which were formerly considered subgenera of ''Gazella''. A third ...

and wild

ibex An ibex (plural ibex, ibexes or ibices) is any of several species of wild goat (genus ''Capra''), distinguished by the male's large recurved horns, which are transversely ridged in front. Ibex are found in Eurasia, North Africa and East Africa. ...

es. Abu Madi has been suggested to be amongst the ten probable centers for the origin of agriculture and used in

statistical analysis Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical analysis infers propertie ...

to determine the rate of spread into Europe.Pinhasi R, Fort J, Ammerman AJ., Tracing the Origin and Spread of Agriculture in Europe. PLoS Biol 3(12): e410. (2005)

Literature

* Bar-Yosef, Ofer., ''Neolithic Sites in Sinai'', Frey and Uerpmann 1981, Beiträge zur Umweltgeschichte des Vorderen Orients, Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients (TAVO) A 8, Wiesbaden, pp. 217–235, 19 pages, 1981. * Gopher, Avi., Flint tool industries of the Neolithic period in Israel, PhD thesis, Hebrew University Jerusalem, 389 pages, 1985. * Kuijt, I. Bar-Yosef, O., ''Radiocarbon Chronology for the Levantine Neolithic: Observations and Data'', Radiocarbon, 36, 227–245, 1994. * Gopher, A., Arrowheads of the Neolithic Levant. A Seriation Analysis, PhD thesis. American Schools of Oriental Research. Dissertation Series 10, 1994.

References

{{Portal, Egypt, History, Asia Buildings and structures completed in the 10th millennium BC 1980s archaeological discoveries Archaeological sites in Egypt Khiamian sites Natufian sites