A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The microliths were used in spear points and arrowheads.
The three-age system is the periodization of human prehistory into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, although the concept may also refer to other tripartite divisions of historic time periods. In history, archaeology and physical anthropology, the three-age system is a methodological concept adopted during the 19th century according to which artefacts and events of late prehistory and early history could be broadly ordered into a recognizable chronology. C. J. Thomsen initially developed this categorization in the period 1816 to 1825, as a result of classifying the collection of an archaeological exhibition chronologically – there resulted broad sequences with artefacts made successively of stone, bronze, and iron.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) denotes the first stage of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in early Levantine and Anatolian Neolithic culture, dating to c. 12,000 – c. 10,800 years ago, that is, 10,000–8800 BCE. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and Upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent.
The Seine–Oise–Marne or SOM culture is the name given by archaeologists to the final culture of the Neolithic and first culture of the Chalcolithic in northern France and southern Belgium.
The Peiligang culture was a Neolithic culture in the Yi-Luo river basin that existed from about 7000 to 5000 BC. Over 100 sites have been identified with the Peiligang culture, nearly all of them in a fairly compact area of about 100 square kilometers in the area just south of the river and along its banks.
In archaeology, a tranchet flake is a characteristic type of flake removed by a flintknapper during lithic reduction. Known as one of the major categories in core-trimming flakes, the making of a tranchet flake involves removing a flake parallel to the final intended cutting edge of the tool which creates a single straight edge as wide as the tool itself. A large flint artifact with a chisel-end, the tranchet flake has a cutting edge that is sharp and straight. The cutting edge is unmodified in most cases; sometimes, it is polished for increased durability and/or sharpness.
The archaeological Neman culture existed from about 5100 to the 3rd millennium BC, starting in the Mesolithic and continued into the middle Neolithic. It was located in the upper basin of the Neman River. In the north, the Neman culture bordered the Kunda culture during the Mesolithic and the Narva culture during the Neolithic.
The Khiamian culture is a Neolithic archaeological culture of Southwest Asia, dating to the earliest part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), around 9,700 to 8,600 BC. It is primarily characterised by a distinctive type of stone arrowhead—the "El Khiam point"—first found at the type site of El Khiam.
El Khiam (الخیام) is an archaeological site near Wadi Khureitun in the Judaean Desert in the West Bank, on the shores of the Dead Sea.
Neba'a Faour, Tell Neba'a Faour, Mashna'et el Faour, Neba Faour or Nebaa Faour is a large, low-lying archaeological tell mound in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon inhabited in the late 7th and early 6th millennium BC. It was initially discovered by Lorraine Copeland and Peter J. Wescombe in 1965 near the road from Beirut to Damascus, 5 miles from the border with Syria. The site was mainly composed of soil and pebbles on limestone bedrock, the site showed heavy erosion since it was abandoned and recent damage from modern construction in the area. It has been suggested as an example of an aceramic stage following the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) that is called the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (PPNC); sites of comparable culture are Tell Ramad, Labwe and others in the Byblos region. It is generally dated between the second half of the 7th millennium and the beginning of the 6th millennium BC.
Abu Madi is a cluster of prehistoric, Neolithic tell mounds in Southern Sinai, Egypt. It is located east of Saint Catherine's Monastery at the bottom of a granite ridge. It was suggested to have been a seasonal encampment for groups of hunter gatherers and contained the remains of two major settlements; Abu Madi I and Abu Madi III. Abi Madi I is a small site with the remains of a partially buried 4 metres (13 ft) building containing deposits up to a depth of 1.3 metres (4.3 ft). Abu Madi III was an area of roughly 20 square metres (220 sq ft) that was excavated close to a large nearby boulder. Dwellings were found to have stone built silos next to them. It was first excavated in the early 1980s by Ofer Bar-Yosef.
Tell Ain Nfaikh or Ain Nfaikh is an archaeological site in an area c. 100 square metres (1,100 sq ft) of a ploughed field 300 metres (980 ft) east of the Litani, north of Rayak on the west of the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon.
Tell Ain Saouda is a small neolithic, archaeological tell, approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) south of Tell Neba'a Litani, Lebanon.
The Sands of Beirut were a series of archaeological sites located on the coastline south of Beirut in Lebanon.
Heavy Neolithic is a style of large stone and flint tools associated primarily with the Qaraoun culture in the Beqaa Valley, Lebanon, dating to the Epipaleolithic or early Pre-Pottery Neolithic at the end of the Stone Age. The type site for the Qaraoun culture is Qaraoun II.
Damjili – is a half-circular shaped cave site in Azerbaijan, where evidence of prehistoric human presence during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic was discovered.
Stone Age in Azerbaijan is divided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods. It was studied in Karabakh, Gazakh, Lerik, Gobustan, and Nakhchivan. Stone materials belonging to the Stone Age were found by Mammadali Huseynov in the Shorsu gorge located near the village of Gyrag Kasaman in Qazakh region. According to his research, people have first settled in the territory of Azerbaijan 2 million years ago. The Stone Age era involved two different human species: Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens.
The Nizzanim culture is a suggested archaeological culture from the Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant. It was identified in three sites spread over a small area on the southern coastal plain of modern Israel, including the type site of Nizzanim, Giv'at Haparsa, and Ziqim. The sites were studied by Ya'akov Olami, Felix Burian, Erich Friedman, Shmuel Yeivin, and Yosef Garfinkel. In those sites, there were no architectural remains but pits and floor levels with hearths. These findings seem to represent a pastoral-nomadic population, similar to the precedeeing population of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Ashkelon and the Qatifian culture. Garfinkel suggests that these settlement served as seasonal hunting or fishing campsites.
The Dolmen of Pedra Branca is a burial tomb, used in the late Neolithic and, subsequently, in the late Chalcolithic periods. It is situated in the Vale de Figueira in the parish of Melides, which is in the Grândola municipality of Portugal's Setúbal District.
The Butovo culture was a post-glacial Mesolithic culture in the Upper Volga region of Russia in the catchment areas of the Volga and Oka rivers, 9600-6000 BC. The culture was formed by groups that developed from the Swiderian culture, which migrated to the region from the south as the climate warmed after the Ice Age. The Butovo culture is divided into the Early, Middle and Late phases. It has also been suggested that the Butovo culture began in the Younger Dryas period before 10100 BC.
