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 Rhafas is a small cave located at 900m elevation in the Oujda Mountains of northeast Morocco approximately 50km from the coast. The site, which was first excavated in the 1980s by L. Wengler, contains over 4.5m of deposits. Wengler has described, at the base of the sequence, a deep series of Middle Paleolithic levels. Overlying this are a couple levels of Aterian, and at the top of the sequence is thin Neolithic deposit. In 2007, N. Mercier and colleagues published TL and OSL dates from a portion of the sequence. Their data suggest that the Middle Paleolithic levels mostly date prior to 100 ka, that the latest Middle Paleolithic dates to between 90-80 ka, and that the transition to the Aterian occurred between 80-70 ka.
 In 2007, the Max Planck Institute began working with Abdeljalil Bouzouggar of the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine (INSAP, Rabat, Morocco) at the site of Rhafas. The goals of this project are focused primarily on the late Middle Paleolithic and the transition to the Aterian. We will continue the dating program begun by Mercier, and we will be collecting new samples from the upper levels to better describe the lithic assemblages, to better understand the transition to Aterian, to do a zooarchaeological study of the associated fauna, to better understand the paleoenvironmental context, and to better understand the site formation processes.
Three seasons have been completed. The next field season is planned for summer of 2010.
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