Transport of raw materials during the Middle Paleolithic

Posted on 05/17/2013 by Katzman

fontmoreThis is a 5 cm long  Handaxe from Fontmaure ( Vienne; France). The large and intensively occupied site was located directly on exposure of high quality jasper (secondary colored Upper Cretaceous flint; color oscillating from red to yellow, often multicolored). The coincidence between raw material and the occurrence of the richer and intensively occupied open-air sites is one of the most striking characteristics of Middle Paleolithic site distributions in SW France (Turq 1988).

The Fontmaure site was first recognized in 1905, plundered by amateurs until 1935, and finally destructed by quarry operations. Artifacts from the site represent a long time span between the Acheulian and the Neolithic. Many non patinated blades in collections for example are not from the Mousterian but rather from the Neolithic.

While the modern viewer is fascinated by the beauty of Fontmaure-artifacts, made from local jasper, it has to be questioned if the Neanderthals were equally intrigued by this inhomogeneous material, which is difficult to knap. Pradel noticed that the flint of Grand Pressigny (about 35 km away from Fontmaure) was also used in remarkable quantities at the Fontmaure site. During the earlier MTA about 2/3 of the artifacts were made from jasper while almost all Mousterian “points” were made from Grand Pressigny flint. During the “Mousterien a lames” 4/5 of the artifacts are from local jasper and about 50% of the “points” are made from Grand Pressigny flint (Pradel 1967).

It was clearly the Grand Pressigny flint, which was easier to work, that had a larger distribution, during the Middle Paleolithic in the Vienne area. Only a hand full of Middle Paleolithic tools made from Fontmaure jaspers are known distant from the site and they were found to be situated never more than 50 km away. Most of these findings are from a radius of 5 km around the site (for example: Leigné-sur-Usseau ).

This distribution fits exactly into the almost universal pattern that exists for the Middle Palaeolithic lithic raw material procurement in Europe. According to Féblot-Augustin (1993, 1997) 60–98 % of all lithic materials including cores and blanks came from within 5 km of all the sites; usually 1–2 of materials came from 5- 30 km distance from the sites and consisted mainly of tools and blanks; A few entirely finished tools consistently were made on materials from 20 or 30 to 100 or even 300 km away.

The Quina-Mousterian site of Champ Grand in the Loire Valley between the Paris Basin and Massif Central for example  features ten raw materials (1% of the assemblage, but numbering 568 artifacts) that were found to originate from sources >80km distant in several different directions (Slimak and Giraud 2007). The estimated distances include 180-200 km northwards from the site, and c. 240 km southwards, the latter actually a minimum value due to straight-line crossing of mountains and high plateaus.

Anyhow, during the Middle Paleolithic  transfers >200 km are rare, and more frequent in Central Europe, which may be linked to a more extreme topography and increased continentality in terms of environmental conditions.

What does this pattern mean? The abundance of raw material import from the immediate vicinity is understandable from a practical point view and the assumed absence of containers for transport during the Middle Paleolithic. If we concentrate on long distant transport, I would suggest, that the very small but consistent number of finished  paleolithics derived from more than 50 km, even up to 300  km is most likely the signature of episodic interactions between Neanderthal groups , e.g. during multi-band aggregations or alliance visits. Researchers, who prefer the “cognitively
impaired Neanderthal” model should consider that Neanderthal groups were not as isolated as predicted by their approach.

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Mousterian Scaper from Combe Capelle: For the Aura of Objects

Posted on 05/11/2013 by Katzman

cc combe capelle aggsbach

This is a Quina scraper (7×2,5×3,5 cm) from an early 20th century collection from Combe Capelle, a Paleolithic site situated in the Couze valley in the Périgord region of Southern France (http://www.oldstoneage.com/cc/cc_intro.shtml). For me, such an artifact exhibits a certain „aura”.

Walter Benjamin`s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” continues to inspire significant scholarly attention as a major work in the history of modern aesthetic and political criticism. Benjamin claims that in times past the role of art has been to provide a magical foundation for the cult. Here the artwork’s use value was located in its central position within ritual and religious tradition. A statue or idol conveyed a sense of detached authority, or frightening magical power, which inhered in (and only in) that particular historical artifact. The reproduction in mass of such an item would have been unthinkable because it was its unique singularity that produced the sacrality of the ritual. This illusive quality is described as “aura.” According to Benjamin, even after the advent of modernity and the disappearance of the cult, the aura of singular objects remains present. A painting has an aura while a photograph does not; the photograph is an image of an image while the painting remains utterly original. The sense of the aura is lost on film and the reproducible image itself demonstrates an eminent historical shift. Lascaux II will never have an aura in the Benjaminian sense.

There was a time when things had the ability to speak for themselves. Their meaning could be only understood by divine revelation. René Descartes was one of the first, who suggested that it was the human perception that inscribed the meanings into things.  During the era of enlightenment the belief in a divine language in all things was dismissed in favor of a rational epistemology. During the late 19th and early 20th century- above all the phenomenologists- suggested that the language of things is not just an intellectual construct, but that things have a sensual surplus that cannot completely perceived intellectually. This surplus resembles called aura by Benjamin.

For Walter Benjamin the aura refers to the sense of associations and evocations that cluster around an object; correspondences and interrelations engendered by an object. Aura is a sense of distance, no matter how close an object may be: it somehow seems more than what it is. “’To perceive the aura of an object is to invest it with the ability to look at us in return” (Benjamin 1970); it is the transposition of qualities of the animate to the conventionally inanimate world.

Aura refers to artificiality. Human work has been inscribed into the
artifacts, even into crude Choppers and flakes of the early Oldowan, and even
much more work was invested in highly sophisticated stone tools like the  thin triangular Handaxes during the MTA, Solutrean  leaf points, late Scandinavian daggers or Predynastic knife, to name just a few.

Aura refers to the life of things. A  handaxe at St Acheul found in intact stratigraphy, testified by the eminent  John Evans and Joseph Prestwich on Wednesday 27 April 1859 and documented by the new medium of photography, remains “ the stone that shattered the time barriers” and has therefore a certain aura in Benjamins sense.

The aura of a handaxe from Bed II at Olduvai Gorge (1, 6 Mio yrs.) in northern Tanzania has multiple sources: It was found by the famous Luis Leaky, played a significant role in fixing an early age of the African Acheulian and helped to deconstruct Eurocentric views of very early Prehistoric times.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/images/episode/b00pwn7p_640_360.jpg

Aura refers to authenticity. A cast of the Olduvai Handaxe will certainly have not the aura of the original. Collectors of stone artifacts know the aura of objects, which were once part of famous collections or found at key sites of prehistoric research. See for example the La Micoque artifacts from the Riviere collection displayed in my blog (http://www.aggsbach.de/2010/08/la-micoque/). Collectors also know the disappointment if they perceive that they had acquired a forgery instead of an authentic artifact (http://www.aggsbach.de/2011/09/frauds-on-the-paleo-market/).

Aura refers to singularity. Millions of authentic scrapers from the MSA / MP are known, but the scraper shown here is singular, despite it shares specific characteristics with other Quina scrapers from the Dordogne.

The aura of artifacts may not play any role in the  actual scientific discourse about the paleolithic, but I am sure  that even the most rationalistic prehistorian will feel it  occasionally. Otherwise we could hardly explain that illustrations in textbooks and even in scientific publications are biased towards the most beautiful tools or for example the increasing interest into my blog with about 1000 visitors a day.

 

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Handaxe from the Draa Valley (Marocco)

Posted on 05/09/2013 by Katzman

aggsbach handaxe

The Sahara is rich in Palaeolithic resources and an enormous amount of material was collected during the nineteenth-century colonial explorations by the French military. Subsequent scientific expeditions have also shown the overwhelming presence of the Acheulian in much of the Sahara. Some major sites include Tihodaine in the Central Sahara, in Algeria, Saoura in the north-western Sahara, in Algeria  and Draa Valley in southern Morocco.

The Draa , also spelled Dra or Draâ, is Morocco’s longest river (1100 km). It is formed by the confluence of the Dadès River and Imini River. It flows from the High Atlas mountains south-(east) ward to Tagounit and from Tagounit mostly westwards to the Atlantic Ocean somewhat north of Tan-Tan. Biberson (1961) reported numerous sites with a non-dated early Paleolithic and assigned the non-dated artifact accumulations to the “Pebble culture” (now generally seen as a selective collection of Geofacts); “Old Acheulian” (without prepared core technique) and “Younger Acheulian (with discoid or  Levallois technique).

The artifact, displayed here would have been assigned by Biberson to an early Acheulian, but 60 years after his publication we have lost any confidence on typological seriations for the early Paleolithic. Recent excavations at the classic sites at Casablanca have shown a  highly variable early Paleolithic beginning at 1 Mio k.a. BP. This industry  can include ensembles with or without Handaxes, Cleavers, Chopping tools; and even stratified collections of artifacts composed of small instruments without any  large cutting tools- resembling early industries in South Europe. North African Acheulian should be reconsidered in the debate about the first occupation of Europe and especially in the discussions about the question of multiple “Out of Africa” hypothesis through Mediterranean straits and isthms. One million years ago, our ancestors who manufactured Acheulian lithic assemblages, were facing Southern Europe and nobody can firmly exclude their possible desire and ability for crossing the waters of the narrow strait of Gibraltar.

Suggested Reading:

 http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/staff/hublin/pdf/Raynal%20et%20al%202010%20Quat%20Intl.pdf

BIBERSON (Pierre) Le paleolithique inferieur du Maroc atlantique. Rabat, Service des Antiquites du Maroc, 1961.

 

 

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Jericho and the changing ideology of a Neolithic Society

Posted on 05/04/2013 by Katzman

jericho aggsbach PPNABThis is a small axe from Jericho (PPNA or PPNB; 7×1,8×1,8 cm).

Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) is the name of a tell situated on an ancient lake bed plain  in the Jordan valley in what is now is known as the West Bank, Palestine. The oval tell has between 8 and 12 meters of occupation fill, and it covers an area of about 2.5 hectares. The city that the tell represents is one of oldest continuously occupied (more or less) locations on the planet which dates back to at least as early as the Natufian period, presumably deriving its early prosperity from the proximity of the Ain es-Sultan, an abundant source of water for irrigation purposes.

The subsequent phases at Jericho provide a good basis for the study of the early PPNA (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A), when Jericho was an unusually substantial settlement, as well as the later Aceramic Neolithic (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), the Pottery Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The Natufian and Proto-Neolithic levels provide crucial evidence of the gradual development of agriculture; although there was poor recovery of environmental data compared with more other investigated sites such as Ain Ghazal.

PPNA Jericho exhibits roofed, oval semi-subterranean dwellings and the construction of a first wall which may indicate that violence and conflict were important parts of Jericho’s history during this time. Early Neolithic Jericho (PPNA) also includes an iconic archaeological structure. Among typically domestic structures, on the western edge of the site, a unique tower was found, made of undressed stone with a staircase built inside, internally and externally plastered. It is 8.25m tall, conical, connected to an adjacent wall half its height. It is in many respects a unique and enigmatic structure, at the centre of debate ever since its discovery. It has been interpreted as a fortification, an anti-flooding system, a ritual centre and a political symbol of communal power and territorial claim (http://www.antiquities.org.il/t/images/600/1207614.jpg).

Other important features of Jericho, during the PPNB are plastered skulls, human skulls on which faces have been modeled in plaster and then buried beneath floor houses. Plastered skulls are a known trait from other PPNB sites, such as Kfar HaHoresh, Beidha and the cave site of Nahal Hemar (http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/barkai327/ ).

During the PPNA, the Near East underwent significant changes on economical, ideological and technical life; these changes are what J. Cauvin called the “Neolithisation”. The tower and wall were at Jericho were the first architecture excavated and indicative of communal activity during the Neolithic with a monumental character. These discoveries were followed only 40 years later by other exciting discoveries, all dated to the 10th millennium BC. 

Some examples: During PPNA circular multi-purpose community buildings, discovered at both Tell el Jerf el Ahmar and Tell el Mureybet, suggest a well-developed social organization, with remarkable community activities. At Jerf el Ahmar the earliest of three successive, subterranean ‘community buildings’, which the excavator suggests was used both as a granary and for ceremonies. At the end of its use-life, a headless corpse was placed in the centre of the floor, the posts and roof were burnt, and the cavity was filled in. 

Göbekli Tepe is a tell, about 15km north-east of the Turkish city of Sanlıurfa, at the highest point of an extended mountain range. It is an artificial mound dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Contrary to the sites on the Euphrates, It was not used for habitation; it consists of several sanctuaries in the form of round megalithic enclosures. (http://www.mnhn.fr/museum/front/medias/publication/10613_Peters.pdf).

Another type of communal and monumental structure from the earliest Neolithic in western Asia was recently found at Wadi Faynan and interpreted as a  ritualized gathering place (http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/085/ant0850350.htm).

 All these new elements, that arose during the PPNA indicate a new way of thinking and a new cosmology shared by the sedentary communities: 

“With these new cognitive and cultural faculties, people began to construct and inhabit dramatic built environments. Within these rich cultural environments, they could maintain social memory through ‘commemorative ceremonies’ and ‘bodily acts’), in domestic rituals, in community buildings, in ceremonies with the bodies and heads of the dead, affirming a communal identity of place. These were the first ‘imagined communities’, but, unlike modern nations, they could be formed and maintained without social hierarchies of power (Trevor Watkins; http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/084/0621/ant0840621.pdf)”.

At Jericho, in common with most of the rest of the Levant, the stratigraphy indicates a gap of about 300-500 years between the end of the Aceramic Neolithic and the emergence of the Pottery Neolithic, presumably as a result of the impact of a drastic climatic change disrupting the subsistence and settlement pattern.

By the Late Bronze Age the city had regained its prosperity and became an important Canaanite city. Little evidence has survived to cast and direct light on the well-known Biblical siege of the city when it was captured from the Canaanites by Joshua and the Israelites.

After the Late Bronze Age, Jericho was no longer much of a center, but continued to be occupied on a small scale, and ruled by Babylonians, Persian Empire, Roman Empire, Byzantine and Ottoman Empire, on and on until the present day.

About the PPNA: http://www.aggsbach.de/2011/05/ppna-at-nachal-oren/

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The Aterian: Do not forget the tangs!

Posted on 04/29/2013 by Katzman

IMG_1523

These are Aterian artifacts from a surface scatter at Jbeïlat mountain in Mauritania (a tanged point, a thick non-Levallois blade and a foliated artifact).

Historically, the “Mousterian” of North Africa was classified as a Middle Paleolithic including side scrapers, notches and denticulates, and occasionally Mousterian points, burins, and endscrapers. The Levallois and Discoidal techniques are well attested. The Aterian, which reportedly extends from the Atlantic coast almost to the Nile Valley and from the Mediterranean coast to the southern Sahara, includes these same elements, but also exhibits types not seen regularly in other “Mousterian” contexts, namely tanged or stemmed artifacts, and some bifacial foliates, not dissimilar to those that occur in the Nubian Mousterian and in the Still Bay and Lupemban industries of sub-Saharan Africa.

What is most amazing, that the highly specific tanged technology of Aterian ensembles, that was never used again during prehistory after the demission of this technocomlex, appeared and repeatedly reappeared over ca 100 k.a. This should kept and not discussed away (in the sense that this specific tanging  is meaningless) when new paradigms about the Aterian are formulated. An explicit theory about the  Maghrebian Mousterian should explain the fact of specific tanging over such a large time frame.

 During the last decade of research it became clear that:

  • The Aterian In N-Africa is older than previously thought (145-40 k.a. BP).
  • The Aterian was created by early H. sapiens and the material culture displays some of the same intriguing characteristics seen in contemporaneous sub-Saharan assemblages, including the use of perforated Nassarius shells, distinctive and sophisticated lithic elements and the use of ochre.
  • The Aterian and “Mousterian” in the Maghreb are interstratified and the succession of an “undifferentiated” Mousterian towards a “differentiated” Aterian has been falsified. Therefore many researchers propose, that the Maghrebian Mousterian should be considered as a type of Aterian without tanged pieces and foliates.

  There remain a lot of open questions for further research:

  • We need a better definition of the operational sequences both of “Mousterian” and “Aterian” ensembles including refitting strategies.
  • What exactly is the behavioral meaning of producing tanged artifacts and foliates?
  • We need a technological and typological comparison between the Maghrebian Middle Paleolithic and the European Mousterian, Levantine Mousterian, Nubian Complex and MSA using ensembles from modern excavations. This will help to clarify, together with genetic data, the genesis of the  Maghrebian technocomplexes.
  • We need more surveys for open air sites with intact stratigraphies.
  • In what sense are the “Maghrebian Mousterian” and “Aterian” parts of a larger MSA phenomenon? 

After I had written this post I got access to a great paper, addressing some of these questions: Eleanor Scerri:  The Aterian and its place in the North African Middle Stone Age 

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For a long chronology of the Early Upper Paleolithic in Europe

Posted on 04/21/2013 by Katzman

swabian aurignacien

 

This are  typical Aurignacian tools from the Swabian Aurignacian from my collection. Once assumed to be relatively young, this Aurignacian is now dated among the earliest Upper Paleolithic in Europe.

C-14 Measurements are traditionally made by counting the radioactive decay of individual carbon atoms by gas proportional counting or by liquid scintillation counting. Such measurements need samples of sufficient size (several grams of carbon). The sensitivity of C-14 dating has been greatly increased by the use of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). With this technique C-14 atoms can be detected and counted directly, as opposed to detecting radioactive decay. Radiocarbon AMS samples are prepared by completely burning the sample, collecting the resulting carbon dioxide, and reducing it to a solid carbon target for sputtering atomic carbon ions into the mass spectrometer. This method allows dating samples containing only a few milligrams of carbon and therefore has a lower risk for being biased by mixed samples.

Recent developments in the purification of bone collagen by advanced methods of “ultrafiltration” pre-treatment have made it possible to remove far younger contaminant carbon from bone samples than previously, which has already had important chronological implications for a number European sites, producing higher ages on bone specimens previously dated without this pre-treatment.  For now we must accept that an unknown proportion of radiocarbon results measured in the past may be unreliable and in the case of many bone samples (much) too young. On the other hand in the absence of an agreed standard pre-treatment procedure for bone samples and due to incomplete protocols between different laboratories for sample carbon content and carbon–nitrogen ratio, it is often difficult to evaluate the reliability of the dating results.

Radiocarbon (C-14) dates are always reported either as “percent modern” or years “before present” (BP). The first indicates the proportion of radiocarbon atoms in the sample as compared to samples modern in 1950. The second is directly derived from this on the assumption that the half-life of radiocarbon is 5568 years and the amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere has been constant. Calibration of radiocarbon determinations in principle tries to determine the calendar age of a sample by correlating its raw C-14 age (BP) with calendric measurements made with other independent methods (for example varve chronology, marine sediments, tree ring data). The calibrated data  are assigned as: cal BC. Actually,  the problem with calibration at the moment is, that it is performed differently in different laboratories. According to my experience in calibration of physical systems  I do not doubt, that such problems will be overcome during the next years and that calibration is the only way to make local chronologies directly comparable with each other.

Approximately 39,3. k.a. cal BP, a massive volcanic eruption took place in the Phlegraean Fields, in central Italy, dated with high precision by A-40/A-39, spewing a plume of ash across large areas of south-central and Eastern Europe. The eruption deposits of this event are known as Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) Y-5 tephra. The (CI) Y-5 tephra has a unique signature and can serve as major chrono-stratigraphic marker independently of the C-14 chronology.  The eruption event precedes the Heinrich (H) 4 event in the Greenland ice record at  39,3 k.a. cal BP, which is characterized by a very dry and cold climate.

Wherever the (CI) Y-5 tephra marker is present (South East Europe), the classic Aurignacian consistently overlies the Campanian Ignimbrite. In these parts of Europe the classic Aurignacian therefore seems to be relative young. The Mediterranean Protoaurignacian (at Castelcivita) and Uluzzian (at Castelcivita and Cavallo) and the “Transitional” Paleolithic industries of the Kostenki area (loci 14 and 17) are found below the tephra and must therefore be older than 39 k.a. cal BP. These data are affirmed by the fact that pretreated-AMS dated-C-14 samples at of the Protoaurignacian in Italy  situate this techno complex at ca. 41-40 k.a. cal BP and the Uluzzian at 43 to 41 ka cal BP.

In other parts of Europe the situation is different: Most importantly pretreated-AMS dated-C-14 samples now indicate the presence of an early Aurignacian in S/W- and Middle Europe before the H4 event at the Geißenklösterle, Abri Pataud and at Les Cottés. It seems that the classic Aurignacian in these areas began much earlier than we suggested before!

For the implications of a long chronology on the the EUP of Moravia please look on Petr Škrdla`s talk presented on Gepaard 2013 meeting at: http://www.iabrno.cz/~skrdla/EUP.htm

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A thick retouched Aurignacian blade from Meyrals / Périgord Noir

Posted on 04/12/2013 by Katzman

meyrals

This is a thick  (12×4,5×2,5 cm)  bilaterally  retouched Aurignacian blade with “endscraper” characteristics on the distal end. It is made from typical Dordogne chert and was found near Meyrals  in the Périgord Noir, just a few kilometers away from Eyzies, the Vézère and the Beune valley. The item is very similar to pieces from the Aurignacian levels at Laussel and at some sites  in the Bergeracois. Comparable artifacts are also known from Chez les Rois (Mouthiers-sur-Boëme, Charentes; see picture below; Fig 5 and 6).

On the basis of their relative stratigraphic position and of their typo-technological characteristics, three types of Aurignacian assemblages (Protoaurignacian, Early Aurignacian and Recent Aurignacian) can be distinguished in S/W-France. The Early Aurignacian (I) is characterized by a high grade of significant typo-technological homogeneity. In the Aquitaine this entity is represented by the material from Corbiac-Vignoble II and by levels FG of Caminade-Est, GI-F of Le Piage, and 7 of Roc-de-Combe.

According to a traditional view, the Aurignacian I, at least in Aquitaine, corresponds to the cooling phase following the Les Cottés climatic oscillation, between 36 k.a. and 31 k.a. BP. It is thus earlier than the Arcy oscillation, but not older than ca 36 k.a. BP.

According to researches, who prefer an “early chronology”, substantiated by new high precision C-14 dating and calibration,  the early Aurignacian is roughly coincident with the onset of the strong cold phase Heinrich 4 at  39-40 k.a. cal BP. New radiocarbon dates from Geißenklösterle even suggest the presence of the Aurignacian in the Swabian Jura already prior to the Heinrich 4 cold phase, with the Aurignacian beginning around 42,5 k.a. cal BP. Willendorf II/3 also fits into this timeframe (38-39 k.a. BP-non calibrated dates- within the Schwallenbach I Interstadial), although new  data about this key site are not available. Calibrated C-14 Data from S/W-France question the uniqueness of an Aurignacian in Middle Europe, earlier than in other European regions (“Kulturpumpe” theory) : At Abri Pataud, Higham et al. reported nine discrete Aurignacian levels that span the  Aurignacian I and Aurignacian II beginning immediately before the Heinrich-Event 4.

During the Aquitanian Aurignacian I, a strong identity in the intentions and modalities of blade and bladelet production is apparent from site to site. The “ideal” blade (i.e., that which will be used as a tool blank) is large and, above all, wide and thick; its profile is in general curbed, and extensions of cortex often remain.

Preforming of cores tends to be minimal: crests are rather uncommon, and not well made. The single striking platform is rejuvenated through the removal of thick core tablets. The removal of blades is always effected through direct soft hammer percussion, using an organic hammer, and is carefully prepared: facetted or spur butts predominate .The size of blade cores does not vary with raw-material: blade production stops as soon as the length falls below 8-10 cm, at which time the width of blanks is of 2-3 cm.

Tools on blades are for the most part endscrapers and laterally retouched pieces, like the large blade, displayed here.  The size of blades is often severely reduced through successive episodes of retouch, and the same blank may also go through different typological stages in the course of its technical life time.

MOUTON, P., R. JOFFROY:  Le gisement aurignacien des rois a Mouthiers (Charente). 9me supplement a “Gallia”.  Paris, CNRS, 1958.

The “new “chronology: Thomas Higham via academia.edu

rois aggsbach aurignacien

 

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Fayum- No need for crops?

Posted on 04/10/2013 by Katzman

fayum stemmedA bifacial spear point or a stemmed dagger (9x3xo,4 cm) from the Fayum (Faiyum) Neolithic A, found during the Excavations of 1925/26.

Along the shorelines of the Fayum Lake the remains of settlements of people who lived partly by farming are still preserved. In 1925/6, G. Caton Thompson and E. Gardner excavated several of these Neolithic sites (dated to about 5 k.a. BC) on the northern side of the ancient Fayum Lake, and found many evidences of agriculture.

In one area, for example, they found 165 pits, many of them lined with coiled straw “basketry” and some of them containing emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum sp.). These pits averaged 91–122cm in diameter and 30–61cm in depth. Inside some of the silos were agricultural tools, including a beautifully preserved sickle of wood and flint. So well preserved was some of the grain that investigators at the British Museum tried (unsuccessfully) to germinate it. In the sites near these silos are innumerable potsherds, hundreds of limestone grinding stones, sickle blades, and the remains of the domesticated sheep, goats, pigs and other animals that these Fayum people used to complement their grain crops.

These evidences from the Fayum are still among the very earliest signs of agriculture known in Egypt, but no evidence was found by Caton Thompson, or by any of the later researchers in this area, that the people living in the Fayum “invented” agriculture and made the transition to farming there. The wheat, barley, sheep and goats of the Neolithic Fayum appear to be of strains domesticated in southwest Asia, not Egypt, and there seems to have been a period between the hunter-gatherers and the first farmers when the Fayum was not occupied. So where did these Fayum farmers come from, and when? How did they initially take up agriculture? An ecological scenario has recently proposed by Shirai (http://www.aggsbach.de/2013/02/fayum-continued/) In this scenario specific Neolithic techniques were accepted in Lower Egypt not earlier than during the early 6th millennium cal. BC. This process was possibly triggered by a climatic and environmental change around 6200 cal. BC, that finally lead to the desiccation of the southern Levant, Negev and Sinai and to changes of the rain regime in these areas and in Lower Egypt. These changes enabled for the first time during the Holocene winter crops like Levantine wheat and barley to thrive Northern Egypt.

Anyhow, the answers to these questions, unfortunately, may be lost or deeply buried in the Nile alluvium. Because of the Nile’s scouring effects and because of the intensity of occupation and cultivation of the Nile’s margins, as well as the thick layer of silt that presumably covers the earliest occupations of the Delta and other areas of the Nile channel, very little is known about early agriculture in Egypt in areas beyond the Fayum and Merimde Beni-Salame.

The Fayum agriculturalists seem never to have made the transition to a fully agricultural way of life based on village communities, perhaps because the productivity of the lake and the continuous supply by fish  made agriculture a somewhat marginal improvement, but also probably because annual floods made the lake shore a less attractive farming area than the flood basins along the Nile itself.

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Shaheinab Gouge

Posted on 04/02/2013 by Katzman

Gouge Shaheinab aggsbach

This is a typical “Shaheinab Gouge” (7 cm long), found somewhere the Sahara during the 1980ies.

The site of Shaheinab was excavated 1949-1950 by A.J. Arkell for the Sudan Antiquities Service. Shaheinab is located between Jebel Aulia and the Sixth Cataract. Arkell’s work  proved that the site was an occupation area with remains of ash, pottery with different decorative patterns, numerous amounts of lithic artifacts, shells and animal bones.  This site, dated to about 5 k.a. BP was called   Khartoum Neolithic or “Gouge culture”.

At Shaheinab, two  or three animal species were already domesticated: dwarf domestic goat (Capra sp.), twisted horned goat or sheep (Capra or Ovis sp.) and perhaps one other variety of sheep (Ovis; though the latter is only known from one bone). However, 98% of the animal bones found belong to wild specimens. 

It has to be remembered, that in the Middle East the faunal shift from non-domestic animals (gazelle and deer) to domesticates (ovicaprids like sheep and goats ) already had occurred at ca 8,000-BC during the PPNB, following the domestication of Einkorn and Emmer during the PPNA after9800 BC. In contrast, like other sites in the area Shaheinab lacks any evidence for food – production. The term Khartoum Neolithic has been applied to a number of assemblages in Sudan and the Sahara (Tenere) which share some general features with that of Shaheinab. Such axes are even known from Fayum. If the use of Shaheinab Gouges over a rather large area indicates some kind of cultural identity seems to be rather unlikely.

The” Khartoum Mesolithic”  (8-5 k.a. BP)was discovered and initially described by A.J. Arkell with the publication of the Khartoum Hospital settlement excavation. The site, although not stratified, furnished a wide inventory of the material culture of a previously unknown early Holocene pottery-bearing Mesolithic culture. These hunter–gatherer–fisher groups produced elaborate ceramics together with bone instruments, a geometric chipped–stone industry, sandstone grinders, grinding stones and many other stone and bone instruments. The faunal inventory from the site, which also included large mammals and gastropods, pointed mainly to a fishing-based subsistence strategy. After the pioneering work of Arkell from the 1970s onwards, several other “Mesolithic” sites in central Sudan have been excavated or superficially examined both to the north and south of the country’s capital city, and many other sites with Early Khartoum pottery scattered on their surface have been located, providing a picture of an impressively wide distribution of this culture.

How the Khartoum “Neolithic” refers to the preceding “Mesolithic”, which is actually re-evaluated by modern excavations at stratified sites remains unclear, but along the White Nil, there are certainly many more undisturbed sites, that will help to answer this question within the next years, if the political situation remains “stable”.

Suggested Reading:

http://uofk.academia.edu/AzhariSadig

 

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Middle Paleolithic from Scheden; Lower Saxony

Posted on 03/25/2013 by Katzman

scheden katzbman aggsbach MTAThis is a small (6 cm long) Handaxe from a field at Scheden (Southern Lower Saxony, near Dransfeld).

In southern lower Saxony, between Kassel and Göttingen, there are numerous outcrops of middle and fine-grained Oligocene / Miocene quartzites on the Dransfeld high plateau. The finding of an quartzite handaxe from a field at Dankelshausen drew the attention of F. B. Jünemann to these raw material resources. His interest was stimulated by numerous quartzite Paleolithic findings south of Kassel (Lenderscheid, Ziegenhein as already shown in this blog), first described by A. Luttropp. Jünemann recognized stone artifacts (mainly flakes, blades  and  handaxes)  at several quartzite outcrops (Fuchsberg at Meensen, Altarsteine at Dransfeld, Bühren, and Varlosen) but also as stray finds on the fields. Essentially these artifacts cannot be assigned to any defined technocomplexes, but at least Acheulian Handaxes, simple Middle Paleolithic flake tools and Neolithic blades can be recognized. Jünemanns claims of “Gravettian and Aurignacian” material is certainly not substantiated by typology.

scheden aggsbachAt Scheden ( picture on the left) quartzite was used during the middle Paleolithic for the production of more than 30 small cordiform and triangular handaxes, found together with non-Levallois flakes in the 1980ies by Matthias D. Schön und Ingeborg Schweitzer. Because these artifacts scattered over only a small area of 30 square meters, they were interpreted as representing the remains of a specialized home camp by the investigators. They referred the material to the MTA and of course the outlines of the handaxes resemble MTA bifaces, although in my view there are more affinities to the “Moustérien à pièces bifaciales dominantes” of the Bretagne and the Basse Normandie. Like so many other sites in Germany, the site of Scheden has never been introduced into the international scientific literature.

Map from Jünemann (1970): Paläolithische Artefakte auf Äckern mit Trümmerstreuung von Braunkohlenquarzit im Obetweserbergland südlich des Sollings, 134 – 146, in: Frühe Menschheit und Umwelt, Teil I. Fundamenta, Reihe A, Band 2, Köln und Wien 1970:

scheeden dransfld paleolithic aggsbach

 

 

 

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