Rhafas Cave is located in the Mahgreb region of northern Africa, in the northeastern part of the Oujda Montains in Morocco. The site contains both Mousterian and Aterian occupations, in a well-stratified deposit with 39 separate occupations. Thirty-six of the levels are Mousterian; the top-most are Aterian.
The important thing to recall about Rhafas cave is that it is one of the few caves that exemplify the transition between the Mousterian stone tradition and the Aterian. OSL/thermoluminescence dating shows that the transition from Mousterian to Aterian occurs at approximately 80-70,000 years ago.
The Mousterian at Rhafas is dominated by Levallois technique flakes, with a toolkit with diverse sidescrapers, and denticulates. A few tools in the uppermost Mousterian levels are tanged; tanging increases in the Aterian levels, suggesting that indeed, the Aterian is an outgrowth of native Mousterian technologies.
Rhafas was excavated in the 1980s by L. Wengler; continued studies are run by the Max Planck Institute in Germany under the direction of A. Bouzouggar and J.-J. Hublin.
Sources
This glossary entry is part of the Guide to the Middle Stone Age and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
See the Max Planck Institute's pages on Rhafas Cave for more information on ongoing studies.
Mercier, N., et al. 2007 The Rhafas Cave (Morocco): Chronology of the mousterian and aterian archaeological occupations and their implications for Quaternary geochronology based on luminescence (TL/OSL) age determinations. Quaternary Geochronology 2(1-4):309-313.
