Wadi Rabah and Related Assemblages in the Southern Levant: Interpreting the Radiocarbon Evidence

Current lack of consensus on how to date or even classify “Late Neolithic” or “Early” or “Middle Chalcolithic” assemblages in the southern Levant is due not only to a past shortage of radiocarbon evidence but to misapplication of such evidence as we have an inconsistency in terminology. This paper presents some typological analyses of several assemblages with claimed “Wadi Rabah” and “Middle Chalcolithic” affinities as well as Bayesian analyses of the associated radiocarbon evidence. The results indicate that a group of assemblages with most of the characteristics we might consider most typical of Wadi Rabah date to the period 5800-5200 cal. BC. Some of the assemblages with this claim, however, fit neither the typological nor the chronological characteristics of Wadi Rabah, and appear to belong to a later, yet Pre-Ghassulian, Chalcolithic.