Engineering:Helwan retouch

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Short description: Flint-tool fabrication technology

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]:172-3 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][1]:172-3 Natufian lithic technology throughout the usage of the Helwan Retouch was dominated by lunate-shaped lithics, such as picks and axes[1]:167 and especially sickles (which were predominantly—at least 80% of the time—used for harvesting wild cereals).[3]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Belfer-Cohen, Anna (1991). "The Natufian in the Levant". Annual Review of Anthropology 20 (1): 167–186. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.20.100191.001123. ISSN 0084-6570. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234147661_The_Natufian_in_the_Levant. 
  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. Unger-Hamilton, Romana. The Epi-Palaeolithic Southern Levant and the Origins of Cultivation. Current Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), pp. 95, 96