Moukhtara () is a small town in the Chouf District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate of Lebanon. The town's inhabitants are divided between Druze and Maronites. It is the hometown of Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party.
History
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.
[ HAÏDAR-BOUSTANI, MAYA. LE NÉOLITHIQUE DU LIBAN DANS LE CONTEXTE PROCHE-ORIENTAL, ÉTAT DES CONNAISSANCES. ANNALES D’HISTOIRE ET D’ARCHÉOLOGIE, Université Saint-Joseph, Beyrouth. Vol. 12-13, 2001–2002, ISSN 1729-6927] 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."[James Mellaart, Earliest Civilizations in the Near East, p. 46, Thames and Hudson, London, 1965.]
Literature
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Cauvin, J., "The Neolithic Moukhtara (South Lebanon)," L'Anthropologie, 67, 1963, p. 489-511. (1963)
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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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