Archaeologists Find Prehistoric Settlement 'Surprisingly' Survived Crisis

Archaeologists investigating a submerged prehistoric settlement have found that it surprisingly managed to survive a period of climate instability that occurred around 8,200 years ago.

The village, dubbed Habonim North, now lies below the Mediterranean Sea off the Carmel Coast of Israel, at a depth of around 8 to 10 feet below the surface. Prior to the latest research, almost nothing was known about the settlement aside from its location.

But now a team of experts involving researchers from the University of California, San Diego, as well as the University of Haifa (UH) and Bar-Ilan University in Israel, have begun to unravel its secrets in a study published in the journal Antiquity.

The research included the first formal excavation of the submerged site, which was first discovered in the mid-2010s and later identified during a survey led by Ehud Arkin Shalev with UH—one of the authors of the study.

"The site was re-discovered during our team's surveys. At first, we thought it was a site related to a later archaeological period," Roey Nickelsberg, a Ph.D. candidate with UH's Department of Maritime Civilizations, who co-led the excavations, told Newsweek.

However, after examining the finds, including organic remains that the team managed to radiocarbon date, the researchers determined that the site was occupied during the Early Pottery Neolithic period (around 6400–5500 B.C.) of the southern Levant, around the time of a phenomenon that scientists call the "8.2 ka" climatic event.

Nickelsberg said it was "absolutely a surprise" to find that Habonim North likely dated to this period.

"There are many submerged sites in this area but they are all from a later or earlier period," he said. "And on land there is very limited evidence for settlement during this period, so to identify an active permanent settlement was surprising and exciting."

The scarcity of contemporary sites in the region potentially reflects the impact of the 8.2ka event, which as the name suggests, took place around 8,200 years ago—or 6200 B.C. The event was characterized by a sudden drop in global temperatures that may have occurred over the space of just few decades. In total, the event may have lasted for roughly a couple of centuries, or more.

During the event, the eastern Mediterranean region, where Israel lies, experienced increasingly arid conditions, effectively resulting in drought across many areas. This would likely have affected the farming communities that were beginning to emerge during this period.

"The impact could have been devastating on Neolithic farming communities,"
Assaf Yasur-Landau, head of the Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at UH, who co-led the excavations at Habonim North, told Newsweek.

Previously, archaeologists believed that the climate event may have led to the widespread abandonment of coastal settlements in the southern Levant, such as Habonim North.

"During the time period related to the 8.2ka event, there seemed to have been no permanent coastal settlements, and, therefore, it was assumed that the coast was abandoned and then resettled later," Nickelsberg said.

But the latest study suggests that at least one village remained occupied throughout the period of climate instability.

The team's investigations at the site uncovered a variety of remains, including pottery shards, stone tools (such as ceremonial weapons and possible fishing net weights), animal and plant remains, and traces of architecture.

The researchers managed to date some of the organic remains using radiocarbon techniques, including those of wild and domesticated animals, as well as the charred seeds of plants. This work—alongside an analysis of the other remains—helped to date the site to the Early Pottery Neolithic, which coincided with the 8.2ka event, not to mention the emergence of pottery in the Levant region.

"It was only after our first excavation season when we analyzed the finds and applied radiocarbon dating to the site that we understood the site was in the ballpark of the 8.2ka climate event," Tom Levy, a co-author on the paper with the UC San Diego Center for Cyber-Archaeology and Sustainability at the Qualcomm Institute, told Newsweek.

It is unclear exactly how the prehistoric inhabitants of Habonim North survived, or even what impacts the 8.2ka event had on them. But the settlement—which had access to marine resources, as well as farmland for growing crops—provides some clues, displaying evidence of a diverse economy.

The ability to extract both marine resources (such as fish, shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, oysters and octopus) and land-based agricultural resources (for example, cereals, meat from wild game and domestic animals, as well as their secondary products, like milk) may have provided these early farmer-fishers with a "flexible strategy to survive," Levy said.

Furthermore, the inhabitants would have been able to store their surplus with the novel technology of pottery. There is even evidence that the settlement may have engaged in trade or exchange with other communities, which would have boosted its resilience by providing access to additional resource streams.

"In Habonim North we have an exciting window into life in a crucial period within the Neolithic—the beginning of the use of pottery," Yasur-Landau said. "The ability to store goods in containers, as well as to cook and serve food in ceramic pots and bowls, changed society for millennia. It's astonishing that even in this very early stage, the pottery at the site came from different sources. It is possible that we have the beginning of trade in both vessels, as well as in agricultural products stored in vessels."

The results of the study indicate that at least some early Neolithic societies in the region were "resilient and sustainable" in the face of abrupt climatic changes, according to the researchers.

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