Re-sharpening the arguments: integrating data on Ahmarian technology and typology in Al-Ansab 1 (Jordan)

The Ahmarian is an Upper Palaeolithic industry developing in the Levant between 45-42 and 36 ka cal BP. Al-Ansab 1 is one of the most recently excavated Ahmarian stratified sites (Richter et al., 2020). The site is featuring a rich assemblage of findings, that can be subjected to in-depth analyses to better understand Ahmarian life-ways (Richter et al., 2020; Schoenenberg & Sauer, 2022). As part of that, we investigated the relationship between the lithic technology and the Ahmarian fossil directeur, the El - Wad point. The El-Wad point is a much-discussed type, but most of the authors agree that it features a tip “shaped by fine and/or steep retouch, usually on their dorsal face”(Shea, 2013, p. 140). Seminal research on the southern Ahmarian suggested that El-Wad points are perfectly inserted within the technological system, which produces unidirectional slender blades and bladelets from narrow-fronted cores (Belfer-Cohen & Goring- Morris, 2008; Goring-Morris & Davidzon, 2006). To bring fresh arguments, we selected 2175 artefacts for the technological analysis (cores and complete and semi-complete flakes, blades and bladelets) and 25 complete El-Wad points. The technological analysis appoints on a chaîne opératoire approach corroborated by morpho-technological attributes, the typological analysis isacombinationofmorphometricattributestobetterconstrainthetype.Thetechnologicalanalysis revealed a complete on-site reduction focused on the obtention of straight in profile, regular, unipolar blanks from narrow portions of the flaking surface: most of them are bladelets, i.e. less than 12 mm in width. The El-Wad points are fabricated on blanks having the aforementioned characteristics, they are mostly concentrated in a narrow interval of width values (13.3-10.2 mm) and they are significantly more elongated than the rest of simple blades and/or bladelets. They feature a variety of retouch combinations, but mostly a continuous retouch along one edge that couldvaryfromslighttomoresubstantialmodificationtowardsthetip.Asaresultofbothanalyses, we suggest that Ahmarian knappers in Al-Ansab 1 were mostly looking for regular hafting implements.Therefore,theyfocusedonsmallersizes,whichprovidedahigherchanceofregularity. Less optimal blanks, mostly coming from the earliest part of the reduction, were additionally shaped to increase symmetry or edge convergence.