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Bleiblo F, Michael P, Brabant D, Ramana CV, Tai T, Saleh M, Parrillo JE, Kumar A, Kumar A.
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Int J Clin Exp Med. 2013;6(1):16-25. Epub 2012 Nov 18.
Abstract
The 1950s excavations by Charles McBurney in the Haua Fteah, a large karstic cave on
the coast of northeast Libya, revealed a deep sequence of human occupation. Most
subsequent research on North African prehistory refers to his discoveries and
interpretations, but the chronology of its archaeological and geological sequences
has been based on very early age determinations. This paper reports on the initial
results of a comprehensive multi-method dating program undertaken as part of new
work at the site, involving radiocarbon dating of charcoal, land snails and marine
shell, cryptotephra investigations, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating
of sediments, and electron spin resonance (ESR) dating of tooth enamel. The dating
samples were collected from the newly exposed and cleaned faces of the upper 7.5 m
of the ∼14.0 m-deep McBurney trench, which contain six of the seven major cultural
phases that he identified. Despite problems of sediment transport and reworking,
using a Bayesian statistical model the new dating program establishes a robust
framework for the five major lithostratigraphic units identified in the
stratigraphic succession, and for the major cultural units. The age of two
anatomically modern human mandibles found by McBurney in Layer XXXIII near the base
of his Levalloiso-Mousterian phase can now be estimated to between 73 and 65 ka
(thousands of years ago) at the 95.4% confidence level, within Marine Isotope Stage
(MIS) 4. McBurney’s Layer XXV, associated with Upper Palaeolithic Dabban blade
industries, has a clear stratigraphic relationship with Campanian Ignimbrite tephra.
Microlithic Oranian technologies developed following the climax of the Last Glacial
Maximum and the more microlithic Capsian in the Younger Dryas. Neolithic pottery and
perhaps domestic livestock were used in the cave from the mid Holocene but there is
no certain evidence for plant cultivation until the Graeco-Roman period.
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