40Ar/39Ar age limit for an Acheulian site in Israel

The lake of Berekhat Ram fills a caldera which cuts the Pleistocene basalt flows that cover the Golan Heights1 in Israel (Fig. 1). In the north-west wall of the crater a sequence of two basalt flows is exposed separated by a reddish-brown palaeosol complex ∼2 m thick. Scattered through this palaeosol, and also found in prominent concentration in one layer near the base, are lithic artefacts of an Upper Acheulian industry. We have now obtained a 40Ar/39Ar date of 233±3 kyr for the overlying flow, while the underlying flow does not give a well-defined plateau during step heating, but gives a range of apparent ages from 290 to 780 kyr, with an integrated age of 470 kyr.