Tell Jisr, Tell el-Jisr or Tell ej-Jisr is a hill and archaeological site northwest of

Joub Jannine Joub Jannine ( / ALA-LC: ''Jub Jannīn'') is located in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. Joub Jannine is the capital of West Beqaa. It is a town and the center of the Western Beqaa District, hosting the Serail, which is a main governmental buildin ...

in the Beqaa Valley in

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...

. It was discovered in 1965-1966 by

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 but the perimeter and extent of the find was not fully determined. It is suggested to have been surrounded by fertile

arable land Arable land (from the la, arabilis, "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for th ...

suitable for crop cultivation and was likely a river crossing, situated on the east bank of the Litani.

Excavation

A large amount of the material collected 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 ...

and M. Tallon is now kept by the

Museum of Lebanese Prehistory The Museum of Lebanese Prehistory (french: Musée de Préhistoire Libanaise, ar, متحف ما قبل التاريخ اللبناني) is a museum of prehistory and archaeology in Beirut, Lebanon. History The museum is the first museum of prehist ...

, part of Saint Joseph University.

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 sta ...

tools were of the heavy type suggested to have been used for

deforestation Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated ...

, they included trapezoidal

axe An axe ( sometimes ax in American English; see spelling differences) is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood, to harvest timber, as a weapon, and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol. The axe has ma ...

s, choppers, a variety of scrapers including advanced fan scrapers, segmented

sickle A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting, or reaping, grain crops or cutting Succulent plant, succulent forage chiefly for feed ...

blades with fine denticulation and some obsidian. The range of

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...

found included stone and basalt bowls and vessels ranging from coarse

White Ware White Ware or "Vaisselle Blanche", effectively a form of limestone plaster used to make vessels, is the first precursor to clay pottery developed in the Levant that appeared in the 9th millennium BC, during the pre-pottery (aceramic) neolithic per ...

to fine, burnished and decorated sherds. A spectrum of jar designs were found with some having red or cream washes. The materials show an established

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 p ...

settlement with many similarities to

Byblos Byblos ( ; gr, Βύβλος), also known as Jbeil or Jubayl ( ar, جُبَيْل, Jubayl, locally ; phn, 𐤂𐤁𐤋, , probably ), is a city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. It is believed to have been first occupied between 8 ...

and lower

Jordan Valley The Jordan Valley ( ar, غور الأردن, ''Ghor al-Urdun''; he, עֵמֶק הַיַרְדֵּן, ''Emek HaYarden'') forms part of the larger Jordan Rift Valley. Unlike most other river valleys, the term "Jordan Valley" often applies just to ...

sites that flourished until the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

. The tell is also notable as the location of the discovery of a fragment of pottery called the McClelland Sherd, ''Tell Jisr Sherd'' or ''El-Jisr Sherd'' that shows incisions suggested to be the oldest

alphabetic An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

writing yet discovered.Mendenhall, George E., The Northern Origins of Old South Arabic Literacy, The University of Michigan and Yarmouk University, Yemen Update 33:15-19 (1993)

References

External links

Geographic.org information on Tell ej Jisr
{{Portal, Lebanon, History, Asia 1965 archaeological discoveries Neolithic settlements Archaeological sites in Lebanon