Occupying wide open spaces? Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer activities in the Eastern Levant

With a specific focus on eastern Jordan, the Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project explores changing hunter-gatherer strategies, behaviours and adaptations to this vast area throughout the Late Pleistocene. In particular, we examine how lifeways here (may have) differed from surrounding areas and what circumstances drew human and animal populations to the region. Integrating multiple material cultural and environmental datasets, we explore some of the strategies of these eastern Jordanian groups that resulted in changes in settlement, subsistence and interaction and, in some areas, the occupation of substantial aggregation sites. Five years of excavation at the aggregation site of Kharaneh IV suggest some very intriguing technological and social on-site activities, as well as adaptations to a dynamic landscape unlike that of today. Here we discuss particular aspects of the Kharaneh IV material record within the context of ongoing palaeoenvironmental reconstructions and place these findings in the wider spatial and temporal narratives of the Azraq Basin. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.