Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint Noisy beginnings: The Initial Upper Palaeolithic in Southwest Asia A. Nigel Goring-Morris * , Anna Belfer-Cohen Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 919051, Israel ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Near east Levant Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) Middle palaeolithic/Upper palaeolithic Neandertals Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) Phases Facies ABSTRACT The emergence of the Upper Palaeolithic in Southwest Asia is considered a unique phenomenon in relation to other parts of the Old World. Besides the local circumstances that are particular to each region, this is the only region outside Africa with the clear presence of modern humans producing Middle Palaeolithic industries. Still, it seems that also here, as elsewhere outside Africa, the UP is conceived mostly as portraying a break with MP life-ways, and continuity, if indicated, is on a rather modest scale. While the geographical extent of the Levant (i.e. the eastern Mediterranean, from the Taurus Zagros moun- tains in the north, to southern Sinai and from the coast eastwards of the Rift valley into the Saudi Arabian deserts) is relatively small, at least four or five variants of Initial Upper Palaeolithic lithic industries have been identified/defined, based on techno-typological criteria, geographical constraints and differing chronologies, as demonstrated at Boqer Tachtit, Tor Sadaf, Ksar Akil, Umm el-Tlel, and Ucagizli. Besides the usual obstacles archaeologists face in trying to identify and define relationships between various archaeological assemblages in time and space, prehistoric research of the Levant, like other regions, suffers from its Eurocentric past and international present, whereby research reflects the different ‘weltanschauung’ and paradigms of the scholars currently conducting it. We shall attempt to present a coherent picture of the present state of affairs, as well as our own understanding of the Levantine IUP, based on the locally available data within the wider context of current prehistoric research. 1. Introduction The emergence of the Upper Palaeolithic (UP) in Southwest Asia is considered a unique phenomenon in relation to other parts of the Old World. Besides the local circumstances that are particular to each re- gion, this is the only area outside of Africa with the clear presence of earlier modern humans producing Middle Palaeolithic (MP) industries living side-by-side with ‘Neanderthals’(Hovers and Belfer-Cohen, 2013; and references therein). Still, it seems that here also, as elsewhere outside Africa, the UP is conceived mostly as portraying a break with MP life-ways, Indeed, it remains unclear whether these processes in- volved replacement, acculturation or in situ changes. Nonetheless, In- itial UP (IUP) cultural developments, in one form or another, appear to have been on a rather modest scale. Another point of interest is the fact that, while the geographic extent of the Levant (i.e. the eastern Mediterranean, from the Taurus/Zagros mountains in the north to southern Sinai, and from the Mediterranean coast eastwards of the Rift valley into the Saudi Arabian deserts) is relatively small, several facies/phases of IUP lithic industries were de- noted (Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris, 2003; Leder, 2018; Schyle, 2015). These facies/phases were defined using techno-typological criteria, geographical constraints and differing chronologies. The sites where IUP entities were defined are found in diverse ecological settings throughout the Levant (Fig. 1). They include (from south to north): the open-air sites of al-Ansab 2 in Edom (Schyle, 2015), Boqer Tachtit in the Negev (Marks, 1983, 2003), Tor Sadaf rockshelter in Wadi Hasa (Coinman and Fox, 2000; Fox, 2003), southern Transjordan, Mughr el- Hamamah Cave on the eastern margins of the central Jordan Valley (Stutz et al., 2015), Emireh Cave by the Sea of Galilee (Garrod, 1955; Barzilai and Gubenko, 2017), Ksar Akil rockshelter on the Lebanese coast (Azoury, 1986; Williams and Bergman, 2010), open-air Umm el- Tlel in the el-Kowm basin, northern Syria (Bourguignon, 1998; Ploux, 1998; Ploux and Soriano, 2003), and Üçağızlı cave in Hatay, Southern Turkey (Kuhn, 2013; Kuhn et al., 2009). Besides the usual obstacles archaeologists face in identifying and defining relationships between various phenomena in time and space, Levantine research suffers from its Eurocentric past and international present. As in other parts of the world outside of western Europe, the first prehistoric explorations were always related to and compared with the European prehistoric record, ignoring the possibility of local, in- dependent developmental trajectories. An example is the conviction https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2020.01.017 Received 20 February 2019; Received in revised form 16 December 2019; Accepted 19 January 2020 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: nigel.goring-morris@mail.huji.ac.il (A.N. Goring-Morris), anna.belfer-cohen@mail.huji.ac.il (A. Belfer-Cohen). Quaternary International 551 (2020) 40–46 Available online 21 January 2020 1040-6182/ © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T