The project aims to track and document sequences, trends, and shifts in food production and related technologies in the southern Levant from the Palaeolithic periods through modern times. We aim to link, with high-resolution food, food processing technologies and cultural settings, while contextualizing food production within economic and social frameworks.  

See LAFPT Assemblages database.

Related publications:

van den Brink, E.C.M., Chasan, R., and Rosenberg, D. 2021. Sifting through: The characteristics and significance of ceramic strainer-vessels in the Chalcolithic period of the southern Levant. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 386:177–207.

Hruby, K. and Rosenberg, D. forthcoming. Urbanizing food: New perspectives on food processing tools in the Early Bronze Age villages and early urban centers of the southern Levant. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

Hruby, K., Bar, S., and Rosenberg, D. 2023. Why painted? The decorated stone tools from Fazael 4, an Early Bronze Age I site in the Jordan Valley. Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 4:69–86.

Hruby, K., Paz, S., Rotem, Y., Iserlis, M., and Rosenberg, D. 2022. Tracing social dynamics of the Khirbet Kerak Ware diaspora and local Early Bronze Age III Jordan Valley communities: Food processing and other ground stone tools as cultural markers. Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society 52:115–154.

Liu, L., Wang, J., Rosenberg, D., Zhao, H., Lengyel G., and Nadel, D. 2018. Fermented beverage and food storage in 13,000 y-old stone mortars at Raqefet Cave, Israel: Investigating Natufian ritual feasting. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 21:783–793.

Liu, L., Wang, J., Rosenberg, D., Zhao, H., Lengyel G., and Nadel, D. 2019. Response to comments on the archaeological reconstruction of 13,000-y old Natufian beer making at Raqefet Cave, Israel. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 38:1–6.

Nadel, D. and Rosenberg, D. 2010. New insights into Late Natufian bedrock features (mortars and cupmarks). Eurasian Prehistory 7(1):65–87.

Nadel, D., Rosenberg, D., and Yeshurun, R. 2009. The deep and the shallow: The role of Natufian bedrock features at Rosh Zin, Central Negev, Israel. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 355:1–29.

Rosenberg, D. 2004. The Pestle: Characteristics and Changes of Stone Pounding Implements in the Southern Levant from the Early Epipalaeolithic through the Pottery Neolithic Period. Unpublished M.A. Thesis. Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv. (Hebrew with English summary)

Rosenberg, D. 2008. Serving meals making a home – The PPNA limestone vessel industry of the southern Levant and its importance to the Neolithic Revolution. Paléorient 34(1):23–32.

Rosenberg, D. 2008. Spatial distribution of food processing activity at Late Iron Age I Megiddo. Tel Aviv 35(1):96–113.

Rosenberg, D. 2013. Not ‘just another brick in the wall?’ The symbolism of groundstone tools in Natufian and Early Neolithic Levantine constructions. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23(2):185–201.

Rosenberg, D. 2021. “Paved with stones”: Ground stone tools during the Late Epipalaeolithic–Early Neolithic transition in the southern Levant. In: Hansen, S. and Klimscha, F. (eds.), Prehistoric Networks in the Longue Durée: Palaeolithic Innovations enabling the Neolithic Revolution. Proceedings of the Conference, Max-Planck Institute, Excellence Cluster TOPI and DAI, Berlin. December 2015.

Rosenberg, D. and Chasan, R. 2021. Between novelty and variability: Natufian hunter-gatherers (c. 15–11.7 kyr) proto-agrotechnology and the question of morphometric variations of the earliest sickles. Proceeding of the Prehistoric Society 87:31–50.

Rosenberg, D. and Garfinkel, Y. 2023. Alternating mediums? The introduction of pottery to the southern Levant and its impact on the production of stone vessels: Sha‘ar Hagolan as a case study. In: Nieuwenhuijse, O., Bernbeck, O., and Berghuijs, K. (eds.) Containers of Change – Ancient Container Technologies from Eastern to Western Asia. Sidestone Press, Leiden.

Rosenberg, D., Gluhak, T. M., Kaufman, D., Yeshurun, R., and Weinstein-Evron, M. 2021. Exploring exchange and direct procurement strategies for Natufian food processing tools of el-Wad Terrace, Israel. Scientific Reports 11:9480.

Rosenberg, D. and Nadel, D. 2014. The sounds of pounding: Boulder mortars and their significance to Natufian burial customs. Current Anthropology 55(6):784–812.

Shimelmitz, R., Gorman-Yaroslvski, I, Weinstein-Evron, M., and Rosenberg, D. 2021. Middle Pleistocene abrading tool from Tabun Cave, Israel, and a search over/for? the roots of abrading technology in human evolution. Journal of Human Evolution 150:1–17.