[2] Nahal Shelef: A Holocene quarry and workshop site in the Menashe Hills, Israel
Published in Mitekufat Haeven: Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, 2019
Recommended citation: Shimelmitz, R., Liu, C., Seymore, M., Gershtein, E. C., Gershtein, K. C., Katina, A., Shtober-Zisu, N., & Nadel, D. (2019). Nahal Shelef: A Holocene quarry and workshop site in the Menashe Hills, Israel. Mitekufat Haeven: Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, 49, 137-151. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26913203
Abstract: Nahal Shelef (formerly known as Site 138 in Olami’s survey) is a quarry and workshop site in the Menashe Hills, Israel. The site is located on a flat hill and is characterized by limestone bedrock with numerous massive flint nodules partly exposed on the surface. These nodules were exploited during the Neolithic-Chalcolithic periods as evident by the numerous roughouts of adzes scattered across the site. Nahal Shelef is important to the research of prehistoric quarry and workshop sites because of two reasons. First is the presence of nodules embedded within the rock outcrops, which bear knapping scars that suggest a mode of extraction yet unknown in the southern Levant. Second is the exploitation of massive nodules as giant cores for obtaining large flakes to be used as blanks for manufacturing bifacial tools.