Age assessment of Natufian remains from the land of Israel.

The Natufian population of Israel was first described by Garrod in 1932, and since then hundreds of skeletons have been discovered in archaeological excavations. Their culture is amply discussed in the literature as designating the transitional stage between extractive and productive subsistence economics in the period ca. 13,000-10,000 years BP. The Natufians represent a local population with strong biologic ties to the more ancient Upper Paleolithic inhabitants of the area. The scope of the present study is to review, on the basis of new skeletal material and new age-assessing methods, the age and sex tables attributed to this group, which usually indicate a mean age of death around 32 years. Copyright 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.