Shifting understandings of the Acheulo-Yabrudian complex and the Lower to Middle Paleolithic transition at Tabun Cave

More than 80 years after it was first excavated, Tabun Cave remains a key reference sequence for the Lower and Middle Paleolithic of the Levant. A large part of the sequence at Tabun consists of assemblages termed Yabrudian, Pre-Aurignacian/Amudian and Acheulo-Yabrudian/Acheulian that comprise Jelinek’s Mugharan Tradition. Investigators have assigned these assemblages to either the Lower or the Middle Paleolithic. Alternative classifications reflect changes in prevailing theoretical frameworks for explaining technological and typological variation as well as in the ways larger periods themselves are conceived. Choices to place them within either the Lower or Middle Paleolithic in turn have important consequences for how cultural and biological transitions in the Levant are understood.