The Helwan retouch was a bifacial microlithic flint-tool fabrication technology characteristic of the Early Natufian culture in the Levant, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean (12,500 BP – 11,000 BP) such as the Harifian culture.[1] The decline of the Helwan Retouch was largely replaced by the "backing" technique and coincided with the emergence of microburin methods, which involved snapping bladelets on an anvil.[2][3] Natufian lithic technology throughout the usage of the Helwan Retouch was dominated by lunate-shaped lithics, such as picks and axes[4] and especially sickles (which were predominantly—at least 80% of the time—used for harvesting wild cereals).[5]

References

  1. ↑ Belfer-Cohen, Anna. The Natufian in the Levant. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 20, (1991), pp. 172-3
  2. ↑ Ofer Bar-Yosef, ASIA, WEST | Palaeolithic Cultures. In: Deborah M. Pearsall, Editor(s)-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Archaeology, Academic Press, New York, 2008, pp. 873, 978012
  3. ↑ Belfer-Cohen, Anna. The Natufian in the Levant. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 20, (1991), pp. 172-3
  4. ↑ Belfer-Cohen, Anna. The Natufian in the Levant. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 20, (1991), pp. 167
  5. ↑ Unger-Hamilton, Romana. The Epi-Palaeolithic Southern Levant and the Origins of Cultivation. Current Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), pp. 95, 96
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