Natufian Culture: The First Settled Villages of the Levant

The Natufian culture was a society of hunter-gatherers that flourished in the Levant, the lands along the eastern Mediterranean, from about 12,500 to 9500 BC. The Natufians are famous for building some of the world’s first permanent villages, for harvesting wild cereals with stone sickles and for elaborate burials, including graves shared with dogs. Archaeologists see them as the threshold between the Ice Age foragers of the Old Stone Age and the first farmers of the Neolithic.

Discovery and name

The culture was identified by the British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod. In 1928 she excavated Shuqba Cave in Wadi an-Natuf, north-west of Jerusalem, and found a distinctive industry of tiny flint tools, or microliths, above older Stone Age layers. She named it the Natufian after the valley.

Garrod went on to dig the caves of Mount Carmel, including el-Wad, between 1929 and 1934, where she found Natufian burials, carved bone objects and sickle hafts. Her work with the palaeontologist Dorothea Bate, published in 1937, became a foundation of Near Eastern prehistory. Garrod later became the first woman to hold a professorship at the University of Cambridge.

The decisive breakthrough came in 1955, when Jean Perrot began excavating Ain Mallaha, also known as Eynan, near Lake Hula in northern Israel. There he found the remains of round stone houses, proof that the Natufians had lived in a village rather than only in caves. François Valla later continued work at the site.

Time and place

Archaeologists divide the culture into an Early Natufian (roughly 12,800-11,800 BC), a Late Natufian and a Final Natufian ending around 9500 BC. Exact boundaries vary between studies by several centuries, because they depend on calibrated radiocarbon dates.

The core area lay in the Mediterranean woodland belt of modern Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon, where oak, pistachio and wild cereals grew. Related sites extend into the Syrian steppe and as far as the middle Euphrates, at places such as Abu Hureyra and Mureybet. Well-known Natufian sites include Ain Mallaha, Hayonim Cave, el-Wad, Wadi Hammeh 27 in Jordan and Hilazon Tachtit in Galilee.

Villages before farming

The most striking feature of the Natufians is that many of them stopped moving with the seasons. Early Natufian houses were round or oval, partly dug into the ground, with low stone walls and roofs of branches and brush. Some were 5 to 9 metres across. Hearths, storage pits and heavy stone mortars were built into the floors.

Settlements such as Ain Mallaha probably housed a few dozen to perhaps 150 people, though such estimates are uncertain. The presence of house mice, sparrows and rats in the deposits suggests that people stayed in one place for much or all of the year, creating the first human commensal species that thrived on settled life.

Sedentism was a profound change. It allowed people to accumulate heavy equipment, store food and invest in buildings, but it also tied them to local resources and made them vulnerable to bad years.

Food: wild cereals, gazelles and acorns

The Natufians ate a broad range of foods. Mountain gazelle was the main game animal, alongside deer, wild boar, aurochs, birds and fish. They also gathered acorns, almonds, pistachios, lentils and other legumes.

Wild barley and wild wheat were harvested with sickles made of small flint blades set in bone or wooden handles. Many of these blades show “sickle gloss”, a polish caused by cutting silica-rich grass stems. Mortars, pestles and grinding stones were used to process grain and nuts.

Two recent studies have drawn wide attention. Charred food remains from Shubayqa 1 in north-eastern Jordan, dated to about 14,400 years ago, were identified in 2018 as a bread-like product made from wild cereals and club-rush tubers. In the same year, residues in mortars at Raqefet Cave on Mount Carmel were interpreted as evidence of a fermented cereal drink about 13,000 years ago. Both claims are discussed and refined by specialists rather than settled.

Burials, art and the dog

The Natufians buried their dead in and around their settlements, sometimes singly and sometimes in groups. Some bodies wore headdresses and necklaces of dentalium shells, which came from the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, as well as bone and stone beads. In the Late Natufian, skulls were sometimes removed after burial, a practice that later Neolithic peoples developed further.

At Ain Mallaha, excavators found an elderly person buried about 12,000 years ago with one hand resting on a puppy, published in 1978. Dogs were also buried with people at Hayonim Terrace. These graves are among the earliest evidence of domesticated dogs living alongside humans in the Near East.

At Hilazon Tachtit, a woman was buried around 12,000 years ago with some 50 tortoise shells, parts of a wild boar, an eagle wing, a cow tail and a human foot. Her excavators described her as a possible shaman. The site also yielded evidence of communal feasting.

Natufian art includes carved bone sickle handles shaped like animals, small stone figurines and incised patterns. The best-known object is the Ain Sakhri figurine in the British Museum, a small calcite carving of an embracing couple, usually attributed to the Natufian period.

The Younger Dryas and the end of the Natufian

Around 10,900 BC the climate turned abruptly colder and drier in an episode called the Younger Dryas, which lasted until about 9700 BC. In the Levant, Late Natufian settlements became smaller and many groups appear to have become more mobile again, though some sites stayed in use.

Some researchers, notably Ofer Bar-Yosef, argued that this climatic stress encouraged people to cultivate wild cereals deliberately to secure their food supply. Others question how severe the Younger Dryas was in the Levant and stress social factors instead. The link between the Natufians and the beginnings of farming is therefore real but still debated in its details.

After about 9500 BC, as the climate warmed, the Natufian gave way to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. Its people built larger villages, such as the settlement with the famous Tower of Jericho, and began the process described in the Neolithic Revolution.

Myths and facts

A common idea is that farming came first and villages followed. The Natufians show the reverse: sedentary villages appeared a few thousand years before domesticated plants and animals. Another misconception is that the Natufians were “the first farmers”. They harvested and processed wild cereals intensively, but fully domesticated crops appear only after their time.

Timeline

• 1928: Dorothy Garrod excavates Shuqba Cave in Wadi an-Natuf and names the Natufian culture.
• 1929-1934: Garrod excavates the Mount Carmel caves, including el-Wad.
• 1955: Jean Perrot begins excavations at Ain Mallaha (Eynan).
• c. 12,800 BC: The Early Natufian begins in the southern Levant (dates vary between studies).
• c. 12,400 BC: Bread-like remains are charred at Shubayqa 1 in Jordan (about 14,400 years ago).
• c. 10,900 BC: The Younger Dryas cold period begins; Late Natufian groups adapt.
• c. 10,000 BC: Burial of a person with a puppy at Ain Mallaha (about 12,000 years ago).
• c. 9500 BC: The Natufian gives way to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A.

Why it matters

The Natufians changed the human relationship with place. By settling down, storing food and harvesting wild cereals, they created the conditions in which farming could emerge in the Fertile Crescent. Their villages, burial customs and bond with dogs foreshadow the Neolithic world that followed, including the domestication of crops described in Domestication of Wheat and Barley.