The Mayroubian (from the type site
Mayrouba
Mayrouba ( ar, ميروبا; also spelled ''Meyrouba'' or ''Mairouba'') is a village and municipality in the Keserwan District of the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate in Lebanon. Its average elevation is above sea level and its total land area is 823 h ...
) is a culture of the
Lebanese Stone Age
The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with t ...
.
Archaeological
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
sites of this culture occur in the earliest,
cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...
,
sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...
layer at altitudes of over in the districts of
Meten,
Chouf
Chouf (also spelled Shouf, Shuf or Chuf, in ''Jabal ash-Shouf''; french: La Montagne du Chouf) is a historic region of Lebanon, as well as an administrative district in the governorate (muhafazat) of Mount Lebanon.
Geography
Located south-east ...
and
Kesrouan
Keserwan District ( ar, قضاء كسروان, transliteration: ''Qaḍā' Kisrawān'') is a district (''qadaa'') in Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate, Lebanon, to the northeast of Lebanon's capital Beirut. The capital, Jounieh, is overwhelmingly Maroni ...
.
The Mayroubian type of site was first detected by
Henri Fleisch
Reverend Father Henri Fleisch (1 January 1904 – 10 February 1985) was a French archaeologist, missionary and Orientalist, known for his work on classical Arabic language and Lebanese dialect and prehistory in Lebanon. Fleisch spent years rec ...
, who collected surface finds of
flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...
tools and defined a typological variation particular to "mountain sites".
Lorraine Copeland
Lorraine Copeland (born Elizabeth Lorraine Adie, 1921April 2013) was a British archaeologist specialising in the Palaeolithic period of the Near East. She was a secret agent with the Special Operations Executive during World War II.
Early life
...
and
Peter Wescombe
Peter Wescombe (4 January 1932 – 25 November 2014) was a British diplomat, amateur archaeologist, historian and founding member of the Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buck ...
preferred use of the term "Meyroubian" after one site was found that was not in the mountains. The term is used to describe around twenty five known surface sites with assemblages of around eighty percent
Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleoli ...
to twenty percent
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...
in form.
[Fleisch, Henri., Les stations préhistoriques de montagne au Liban, VI' Congrès de l'UlSPP (Rome, 1962)] O. Prufer and E. Baldwin noted a resemblance to those in levels seven and nine of
Yabrud Shelter I. Henri Fleisch suggested successive occupations from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic at all sites apart from
Jebel Mazloum, which was classed as a transitional Upper Paleolithic site.
Francis Hours
Reverend Father Francis Hours, born 1921 in France and died 1987, was a French Jesuit archaeologist known for his work on prehistory in the Levant.
He gave the Lebanese a real scientific framework for prehistoric research and worked excavating v ...
suggested it was a transitional industry between the
Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleoli ...
and Upper Paleolithic periods and was placed by Copeland and Wescombe in the final
Mousterian
The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the latt ...
.
Further reading
* Prufer, O., & Baldwin, E., "Mechmiche and Meyrouba ; two Palaeolithic Stations in the Lebanon, Quartär, vol. 9, p. 61, Freiberg (No date).
* Fleisch, Henri., Les stations préhistoriques de montagne au Liban. Acts of the 6th C.I.S.P.P., Rome, 1962 (1966).
* Hours, Francis., Michmiche : mélange ou industrie de transition? Acts of the 6th C.I.S.P.P., Rome, 1962 (1966).
* Hours, Francis., Le problème d'apparition du paléolithique supérieur dans le Proche-Orient. Acts of the 4th International Speological Congress, Ljubljana, 1965.
References
{{Reflist
Paleolithic
Archaeological cultures of the Near East
Archaeological cultures in Lebanon
Mousterian