ʿAin Mallaha

ʿAin Mallaha, or Eynan, was an Epipalaeolithic settlement of the Natufian culture in the Hula Valley of northern Israel, 25 kilometres north of the Sea of Galilee. Its people were sedentary hunter-gatherers, a crucial step in the transition from foraging to farming: they ground wild nuts and grain, cut wild cereals with stone sickles, hunted gazelle, deer and wild boar, and fished in the lake. Kathleen Kenyon describes the village as 50 circular, semi-subterranean huts with stone walls. Families were probably buried in their own houses, and a woman buried with her hand on a puppy is among the earliest archaeological evidence of dog domestication. The site was discovered in 1954.