Chapter 5: Neolithic 3 Ain Hashomer (Page 351-352)

Pre-History and Archaeology Glossary

Excerpts and Definitions and Addendums

Fewer artifacts have been collected from Ain Hashomer than from Tannur and Qat but more classes of material are represented in the finds from the site. Some potsherds were picked up there among them several sherds of a coarse ware and also a fragment of a carinated bowl. One of the more interesting finds was a piece of a white plaster bowl; Ain Hashomer is one of the most southerly sites on which this ware is known to have occurred.

The arrowheads were mostly fragmentary but they were usually retouched by pressure-flaking and two were tanged; one was leaf-shaped. The commonest type of sickle blade was a denticulated segment. Axes were no more numerous than arrowheads and sickle blades at Ain Hashomer. There were trapezoidal and triangular axes as well as almond-shaped and oval ones in the assemblage; a few were partly polished. An obsidian blade and a fragment of a limestone bowl was found on the site. Bone borers were also collected from the surface.

This material though sparse quite closely resembles that from Beisamun, Tannur and Qat as well as the Bekaa [Valley] sites. Like them Ain Hashomer was occupied early in Neolithic 3.

A number of flint tools and a fragment of a basalt object were found on the surface of another site in this group: Zug Fuqani. The most diagnostic flints were several finely-denticulated sickle blades, a pressure-flaked arrowhead and 19 flaked axes, most of which were almond-shaped. The quantity of axes found here and the typology of the tools links Zug Fuqani with Beisamun, Tannur and the other sites in this area which I have considered so it too was probably occupied in Neolithic 3 ...

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