Gilgal I

Gilgal I was an ancient village in the Jordan Valley first excavated by Tamar Noy in 1979. It became further notable as a Neolithic archaeological site in 2005 when Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University and Mordechai E. Kislev and Anat Hartmann of Bar-Ilan University released details of their excavations. They showed caches of selectively propagated fig seeds, stored together with wild barley, wild oat, and acorns in quantities too large to be accounted for even by intensive gathering, at strata dateable c. 11,500 years ago.

Some of the plants tried and then abandoned during the Neolithic period in the Ancient Near East, at sites like Gilgal I, were later successfully domesticated in other parts of the world.^[1]

Literature

• Bar-Yosef, O. Gopher, A. Goring-Morris, A.N., Gilgal: Early Neolithic Occupations in the Lower Jordan Valley, The Excavations of Tamar Noy American School of Prehistoric Research Monograph Series 4Brill Academic Publishers, 2005.
• Noy, T. Kozłowski, S.K., A Basket of Flint Artefacts from House 11 at Gilgal I, Locus 37/42, Kozłowski and Gebel (eds.) 1996, Neolithic Chipped Stone Industries of the Fertile Crescent, and Their Contemporaries in Adjacent Regions, Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence and Environment 3, ex oriente, Berlin, 271-288, 1996.
• Noy, T., Gilgal I - A Pre-Pottery Neolithic Site Israel - The 1985-1987 Seasons, Paléorient, 15/1, 11-18, 1989
• Noy, T., Stone Cup-Holes and Querns from Gilgal 1: a Pre Pottery Neolithic A Site in Israel, Paléorient, 5, 1979

Footnotes

External Link

• exoriente.org Radiocarbon dates for Gilgal I
• University of Cologne Radiocarbon context database entry for Gilgal I