Simple bone tools from Early Bronze Age Tell Fadous-Kfarabida (Lebanon): a household approach

Abstract

Despite their relatively limited scale, the excavations conducted at the site of Tell Fadous Kfarabida on the Lebanese coast between 2004 and 2015 have provided a large and surprisingly varied assemblage of objects made out bone and related materials from the Early Bronze Age levels. In addition to large numbers of awls and spatulae, other objects are attested as well, such as spindle whorls, beads and pendants, decorated bone tubes, a scale beam and several cylinder seals made out of bone or hippopotamus ivory. This study will present a typological study of the material from the site, investigate the raw material used for the different types, and finally conclude with some thoughts on the use of some of the simpler types within the framework of a household archaeology approach.

Keywords:

• Levant
• Early Bronze Age
• bone tools
• household archaeology
• contextual analysis

Acknowledgements

The Tell Fadous-Kfarabida project is financed by research grants from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the American University of Beirut. Additional funds were provided by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Germany (2008, 2009, 2011, 2014), the German Society for the Exploration of Palestine (2010 and 2015), an International Travel and Research Grant from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University (2014 and 2015), the Stigler Fund for Archaeological Fieldwork from Columbia University (2015) and the Arts and Humanities Initiative at AUB, funded by the Mellon Foundation (2015). I would especially like to thank Dr Canan Çakırlar (Groningen University), who not only undertook the zoological identification of the bones, but who was always available for discussions regarding faunal matters. Plans and photographs were supplied by S. Rempel (Arizona State University), P. Breuer (University of Stuttgart), S. Berquist (University of Toronto) and C. Krug (Berlin). Photos of the objects were taken by C. Krug (Berlin) and the author; the drawings of the objects are the work of E. Jastrzębska (AUB). R. Zaher (AUB) helped with preparing the illustrations for the publication. Finally I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for greatly improving the article.

Notes

1 Except for the ivory objects, Tell Fadous-Kfarabida has so far produced only one possible hippopotamus bone. Pers. com. C. Çakırlar.