Early Upper Paleolithic Sites in the Qadesh Barnea Area, NE Sinai.

This paper describes four Upper Paleolithic sites from NE Sinai, near Quseime. Three of them are in a primary context, two of which yielded radiocarbon dates of ca. 33,000- 32,000 years b.p. They are embedded in a silt-sand terrace that is attributed to a relatively wet phase of the Early Upper Paleolithic period. The sites are small camps, remnants of living surfaces, with numerous flint artifacts, limestone anvils and hammers, ochre flecks, and ostrich eggshells. The flint assemblages are dominated by numerous fine blades, some of which were either retouched or backed. The Qadesh Barnea assemblages, along with similar assemblages from the Negev and Sinai, represent the earliest and best-documented Upper Paleolithic culture in the Levant, the Lagaman, which is broadly contemporary (ca. 40,000-30,000 b.p.) with the Early Aurignacian of Europe and the French Castelperronian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]