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3
Crop Domestication and Gender
“In 1928, the British School in Jerusalem undertook the excavation of the Cave of Shukba,
discovered by Père Alexis Mallon, and I spent two months on the site. ...” So begins British
archaeologist Dorothy Garrod’s 1932 account of her revolutionary discovery, at the Wady
en- Natuf in the Judaean hills, of a new type of hunter- gatherer society that showed signs of
early sedentism— living in permanent settlements.^1 The surface layer (layer A) of the Shukba
cave contained numerous artifacts ranging from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine,
with the majority of material dating to the Bronze Age. Just below the surface layer was a
substratum (layer B) with an abundance of small flint tools called “microliths,” which were
characteristic of the Late Upper Paleolithic or “Mesolithic” in the case of European sites.
In addition, there were larger flint knives with a “peculiar polish produced by cutting corn
[wheat] or grass.” These flint blades, apparently used to harvest wild grains, were the first
archaeological evidence that the art of gathering had taken the first step toward cultivation.
After two months, Garrod and her colleagues closed down the Shukba cave excavation,
intending to return the following spring. However, fate intervened in the form of an urgent
request from the Department of Antiquities. Garrod explains the sudden change of plans
as follows:In 1929 the excavation of Shukba was postponed by request of the Department of
Antiquities, in order that the British School might undertake the more urgent work
of digging out a site that was threatened by quarrying. This was the cave known as the
Mugharet el- Wad, near Haifa. It is one of a group of caves lying at the western foot of
Mount Carmel, at the point where the Wady el- Mughara (Valley of the Caves) opens
on to the coastal plain.^2