Moukhtara

Moukhtara
Arabic: المختارة
Shown within Lebanon
Location 30 miles from Beirut, Lebanon
Region Chouf District, Mount Lebanon Governorate
Coordinates 33°39′32″N 35°36′50″E / 33.658863°N 35.613877°E / 33.658863; 35.613877Coordinates: 33°39′32″N 35°36′50″E / 33.658863°N 35.613877°E / 33.658863; 35.613877
Part of Settlement
History
Material tools, flint, bone, ceramics
Periods PPNB, Neolithic
Site notes
Excavation dates 1963
Archaeologists J. Cauvin
Condition ruins
Public access Yes

Moukhtara (Arabic: المختارة) is a small town in the Chouf District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate of Lebanon. The town's inhabitants are mostly Druze, with a Christian minority. It is the hometown of Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party.

It is also an ancient archaeological site, excavated in 1963 by Jacques Cauvin who found an abundance of flint tools. Examinations were conducted on 378 artifacts with finds including daggers, arrowheads, sickles, axes, chisels, picks and awls traced to the Neolithic horizon.[1] James Mellaart suggested that Heavy Neolithic tools and weapons found at the site were "not associated with pottery, and possibly earlier than the Pottery Neolithic of Byblos."[2]

Literature

  • Cauvin, J., "The Neolithic Moukhtara (South Lebanon)," L'Anthropologie, 67, 1963, p. 489-511. (1963)
  • Cauvin, J. et Cauvin, M.-C., Des ateliers campigniens au Liban, in Mélanges R. Vaufrey, La préhistoire, problèmes et tendances. Paris, Éditions du CNRS, p. 103-116. (1968)

Footnotes

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