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2. Neolithisation in Egypt in a Wider Context

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2. Neolithisation in Egypt in a Wider Context The archaeology of the first farmer-herders in Egypt : new insights into the Fayum Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic Shirai, N. Citation Shirai, N. (2010, April 29). The archaeology of the first farmer-herders in Egypt : new insights into the Fayum Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic. Archaeological Studies Leiden University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/15339 Version: Corrected Publisher’s Version Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the License: Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/15339 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). 2. Neolithisation in Egypt in a wider context 2.1. GEOGRAPHICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL Egypt, and the region between Upper and Lower Egypt is called Middle Egypt. The region DISTRIBUTION OF EARLY-MIDDLE HOLOCENE between the First Cataract and the Second CULTURES IN EGYPT Cataract is called Lower Nubia. The rocky mountainous terrain between the eastern cliffs Before discussing the origins and early of the Nile Valley and the Red Sea coast is called development of Neolithic farming and herding the Arabian Desert or the Eastern Desert. The cultures in Egypt, the geographical and relatively flat terrain between the western cliffs chronological range of archaeological cultures of the Nile Valley and the Egyptian-Libyan in Egypt in the Early-Middle Holocene dealt with border is called the Libyan Desert or the Western in my research should be defined here in more Desert. This vast terrain is also called the Eastern detail. Sahara. The Western Desert has five major oases Egypt refers to a present-day country located including Siwa, Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhleh, and at the northeastern corner of Africa (Fig.2.1). Kharga from the north to the south. These oases Egypt abuts the Mediterranean Sea in the north are rich in groundwater derived from the Nubian and the Red Sea in the east. Egypt is bordered aquifer (Baines and Marek 2000: 12-21; Bard by Libya in the west and by Sudan in the south. 2007: 47-54). The river Nile runs in the middle of the land The Middle-Late Holocene saw the from the East African highlands through the developments of diverse archaeological cultures Second Cataract near Wadi Halfa and the First in different regions of Egypt (Table 2.1). In the Cataract at Aswan in the southern part of Egypt Egyptian Nile Valley in the late 5th - early 4th into the Mediterranean Sea in the north, and forms the Nile Delta in the area between Cairo and the Mediterranean coast. Since there is no cataract between Aswan and Cairo, the river is a homogeneous stretch of water with a gentle gradient. The Nile Valley is deeply incised in the Egyptian Limestone Plateau in the northern part and in the Nubian Sandstone Plateau in the southern part, and is bounded by steep cliffs rising up to 300 m. The Nile Valley is very narrow in the sandstone terrain in the south. The floodplain in the Nile Valley widens progressively from the north of the sandstone terrain around Gebel Silsila down to the Nile Delta, but the width of the floodplain is approximately 25 km at most. The region of the upstream of the Nile between the Qena bend and the First Cataract is conventionally called Upper Egypt, whereas the region of the downstream of the Nile to the north of the Fayum is called Lower Fig.2.1. Geographical map of Egypt 7 2. NEOLITHISATION IN EGYPT IN A WIDER CONTEXT Nabta Playa Dakhleh Oasis Nile Valley Fayum Lower Egypt Eastern Desert Negev & Sinai southern Levant Sheikh M uftah Naqada (Ceramic pastoral) (Predynastic) M aadi-Buto Bunat El Ansam Moerian (Predynastic) (Predynastic) 4000 cal.BC (Final Ceramic pastoral) Badarian (Predynastic) Ghassulian (Chalcolithic) Bashendi B Timnian (Ceramic pastoral) M erimde Ru'at El Baqar Tree Shelter AH 3 & Fayumian (Neolithic) (Late Ceramic Sodmein Cave (Neolithic) 5000 cal.BC pastoral) (pastoral) Qatifian (Late Pottery Neolithic) Ru'at El Ghanam (Middle Ceramic Late Bashendi A Lodian (Jericho IX) pastoral) (Ceramic pastoral) Early Pottery 6000 cal.BC ? Tarifian ? Neolithic Yarmukian (Ceramic) (Early Pottery Early Bashendi A Neolithic) (Ceramic pastoral) El Nabta/Al Jerar (Early Ceremic pastoral) Tuwailan PPNC Qarunian Tree Shelter AH 5 & 4 Elkabian (Epipalaeolithic) (Epipalaeolithic) (Epipalaeolithic) 7000 cal.BC LPPNB El Ghorab (Early Ceramic pastoral) Masara (Epipalaeolithic) Desert PPNB ? Helwan ? (Epipalaeolithic) M PPNB 8000 cal.BC El Adam (Early Ceramic EPPNB pastoral) PPNA PPNA 9000 cal.BC Arkinian (Epipalaeolithic) Table 2.1. Chronology of Egypt and the Near East in the Early-Middle Holocene millennia cal.BC, the Badarian culture activities, as described below, and their spatial developed in Middle Egypt, and subsequently, distribution is very wide and is not confined the Naqada culture appeared in Middle and in the Nile Valley (Fig.2.2). Upper Egypt, and the Maadi-Buto culture The floodplain and marginal low desert appeared in Lower Egypt. They are collectively in the Egyptian Nile Valley have been the called the Predynastic cultures which mean the major human habitat since early prehistory, predecessors of the Early Dynastic culture and but the Nile alluviation and the expansion are actually equivalent to the Chalcolithic in of modern land use activities have made it more general terms. The Naqada culture difficult to discover the remains of prehistoric eventually spread over Lower Egypt in the human habitation beneath the present surface. second half of the 4th millennium cal.BC, and Quite a few Early-Middle Holocene cultures culminated in the Early Dynastic state in the 3rd have been found and studied. Cultures of the millennium cal.BC (Midant-Reynes 2000: 152- Egyptian Nile Valley in the Early Holocene are 250). The cultures before the Predynastic have represented by the Arkinian and Shamarkian in been given different names depending on Lower Nubia, the Elkabian in Upper Egypt, and technological developments and subsistence the Qarunian in the Fayum. They are 8 2. NEOLITHISATION IN EGYPT IN A WIDER CONTEXT characterised by microlithic toolkits and are difficult to locate the remains of prehistoric devoid of pottery and domesticates, and thus are human habitation. Prehistoric remains in the designated as the Epipalaeolithic. An ephemeral, alluvial plains are deeply buried and can be enigmatic culture named the Tarifian in Upper located only in exceptional circumstances like Egypt is characterised by the mixture of uncultivated natural mounds called geziras microlithic and flake industries and the presence which have been formed between channels, or of pottery but lacks domesticates, and its precise can be retrieved by deep drill augering. One of chronological position is uncertain (Close such exceptional circumstances has been seen 1996b; Vermeersch 2002). at Sa el-Hagar (Sais) in the central Nile Delta, The floodplain of the Nile Delta must also where surface soils have been removed to a fairly have been a human habitat since prehistory, but large and deep extent for sebakh, and drill due to the Nile alluviation and the expansion of augering and excavations yielded lithic artefacts modern land use activities, it is extremely and pottery sherds which could possibly be dated Fig.2.2. Map of the sites mentioned in this chapter 9 2. NEOLITHISATION IN EGYPT IN A WIDER CONTEXT to the 6th-5th millennia cal.BC as well as the a m a r k e d si m i l a r it y t o th a t o f t h e Predynastic and much later periods (Wilson contemporaneous Elkabian in the Nile Valley, 2006; Wilson and Gilbert 2002; 2003). and the material culture of the 6th millennium Approximately 7 m deep drill augering at a cal.BC also bears some similarity to those in the Predynastic-Early Dynastic site of Minshat Abu contemporaneous Western Desert. However, Omar in the eastern Nile Delta has also retrieved little information about other parts of the Eastern pottery sherds which could probably be dated to Desert is available due to the lack of extensive the first half of the 5th millennium cal.BC field research, and hence cultural connections (Krzyzaniak 1992; 1993). Although many other within the Eastern Desert and between the Predynastic-Early Dynastic sites in the central Eastern Desert and the rest of Egypt remain to and eastern Nile Delta have not yielded artefacts be investigated further. which would be dated earlier than the On the other hand, oases in the Western Predynastic, it is likely that the sites in the Nile Desert have been major foci of human habitation Delta where Predynastic remains have been in a generally semi-arid to arid environment since found had been occupied before the Predynastic. prehistory. Thanks to extensive field research In contrast, prehistoric remains on the covering the entire stretch of the Western Desert marginal low desert of the Nile Delta are far in the past decades and relatively undisturbed more visible, and have been undisturbed until conditions, many archaeological remains of modern land use activities started to expand human activities in the Early-Middle Holocene on that terrain. Extensive survey at the western have been studied not only in the oases but also margin of the Nile Delta has revealed the in other seasonally rain-fed areas. Human presence of prehistoric cultures of the Middle occupation loci tend to be found around Pleistocene and Early-Middle Holocene on the permanent water springs and rain-fed shallow gravelly escarpments and low desert (Junker lakes/ponds called playas. 1928; Menghin 1933a; 1933b; Schmidt 1980). The chronology of Early-Middle Holocene Merimde Beni Salama is the richest in prehistoric cultures in the Western Desert has been artefacts in this area, and further excavations at established on the basis of a growing number of the margin of the low desert of Merimde Beni radiocarbon dates obtained from different Salama yielded not only numerous lithic regions (Table 2.1).
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