El Khiam (الخیام) is an archaeological site near

Wadi Khureitun Wadi Khureitun (Arabic; also spelled Khareitoun, Khareitun, Haritoun) or Nahal Tekoa (Hebrew) is a wadi in a deep ravine in the Judaean Desert in the West Bank, west of the Dead Sea, rising near the Israeli settlement of Tekoa. Name The Hebrew n ...

in the

Judaean Desert The Judaean Desert or Judean Desert (, ) is a desert in the West Bank and Israel that stretches east of the ridge of the Judaean Mountains and in their rain shadow, so east of Jerusalem, and descends to the Dead Sea. Under the name El-Bariyah, ...

in the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, on the shores of the

Dead Sea The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...

. Archaeological finds at El Khiam show nearly continuous habitation by groups of hunters since the

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Ancient Greek language, Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic i ...

and early

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

periods.Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson
/ref> The

Khiamian The Khiamian culture is a Neolithic archaeological culture of Southwest Asia, dating to the earliest part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), around 9700 to 8600 BC. It is primarily characterised by a distinctive type of stone arrowhead—th ...

period (c. 10000–9500 BCE), named for this site, is characterized by

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

arrowheads An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, or sometimes for special purposes such as signaling. ...

now known as "El-Khiam points".Gopher, Avi (1994). ''Arrowheads of the Neolithic Levant: a seriation analysis'', pp
6
& 9, Dissertation Series 10, American Schools of Oriental Research, Eisenbrauns. El Khiam was first excavated by René Neuville in 1934, by

Jean Perrot Jean Perrot (10 June 1920 – 24 December 2012) was a French archaeologist who specialised in the late prehistory of the Middle East and Near East. Biography Perrot was a graduate of the Ecole du Louvre where he studied under two experts in S ...

in 1951 and in 1961.

Gallery

Image:Khiam point.png, El-Khiam point

microlith A microlith is a small Rock (geology), stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 60,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Austral ...

, first found at El Khiam. File:Three El-Khiam points from JQ-101.jpg, Three El-Khiam points.

Gallery

References

Further reading