The Wavy Line and the Dotted Wavy Line Pottery in the Prehistory of the Central Nile and the Sahara-Sahel Belt

The two type-sites of the Khartoum Mesolithic and Khartoum Neolithic (Khartoum Hospital and Shaheinab), in Central Sudan, were excavated at the end of the 1950s. The ceramics recovered from these sites, characterized by wavy line and dotted wavy line decoration, formed a cornerstone for identifying Mesolithic–Neolithic components along the Central Nile and across the Sahara-Sahel Belt. Moreover, they formed a model for an evolutionary sequence, and suggested a level of cultural uniformity for the Nilo-Sahara-Sahel Belt from the eighth to the fourth millennia BC. This paper examines these and other related issues.L'hôpital de Khartoum et Shaheinab, qui se situe au centre du Soudan, sont les deux sites archéologiques principaux de la civilisation mésolithique et néolithique. Ces deux sites furent découverts et excavés au cours des années 1950s. Les céramiques découvertes dans ces deux sites se caractérisent par leurs lignes continues et ondoyantes, et d'autres ondoyantes mais discontinues. Ces céramiques représentent la pierre angulaire pour les caractéristiques de la période mésolithiqueet néolithique dans le centre de la vallée du Nile et á travers la zone du Sahara-Sahel. De plus, elles ont constitué un modèle pour l'évolution et ont suggéré une certaine uniformité culturelle entre la vallée du Nile, le Sahara et le Sahel de huitième au quatrième millénaires avant J.-C. Cette recherche traite donc de ces points et d'autres aspects s'y rapportant.     

Stable isotopes and diet at Ancient Kerma,Upper Nubia (Sudan)

Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values were measured from bone collagen extracted from archaeological Nubian human (n = 54) and faunal (n = 61) populations from the site of Kerma, Sudan. Collagen suitable for isotopic analysis was extracted from 22 faunal and 48 human samples from the Eastern cemetery site, dated to the Middle Kerma (c. 2050–1750 BC) and Classic Kerma (c. 1750–1500 BC) periods respectively. The isotopic data indicate that the human dietary regimen included a mix of C₃ and C₄ plant-derived components, with a larger C₄ component than previously reported in archaeological Egyptian Nile Valley populations. Elevated δ¹⁵N values are attributed to consumption of dietary resources from a ¹⁵N-enriched terrestrial ecosystem. The faunal isotope data also indicate the consumption of C₃ and C₄ plants. The large range of δ¹³C values measured in both the human and faunal samples supports previous work suggesting that a significant portion of the populations buried at Kerma may have originated elsewhere, further confirming the Nile Valley as a major corridor for population movement in the region.     

The Development of Ancient States in the Northern Horn of Africa,c. 3000 BC–AD 1000: An Archaeological Outline

Beginning in the 3rd millennium BC, complex societies and states arose in the northern Horn of Africa. This process culminated with the development of the Kingdom of Aksum in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 1st millennium AD. The development of these polities can be outlined in principle on the basis of the archaeological evidence. The process consisted of at least two distinct trajectories to social complexity, indirectly related to each other in the Eritrean–Sudanese lowlands and the Eritrean–Ethiopian highlands, respectively, with a shift in the location of complex societies from the lowlands to the highlands in the early 1st millennium BC. This shift was due to changes in the general pattern of interregional contacts between the regions facing the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean along the Nile Valley, Red Sea and western Arabia from the 4th millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD.     

Trauma in the city of Kerma: ancient versus modern injury patterns

Injuries, whether accidental or intentional, have incapacitated humans and their primordial ancestors throughout time, although the injury mechanisms have become increasingly more technologically sophisticated. Interpretation of injury aetiology among past peoples is challenging, and often impossible, however, clinical research from developing countries provides a useful analogy with which to evaluate trauma or health patterns of an ancient society. This paper presents a systematic analysis of cranial and postcranial skeletal trauma among 223 adults who were excavated by George Reisner in 1923 from the city of Kerma (1750–1550 BC), Egypt's ancient nemesis in the struggle for control of the Nile River trade route. A total of 156 injuries (fractures, dislocations and muscle pulls among the skull, long bones, extremities and torso) were observed among 88 individuals, 48 of whom had one injury only. The skull was the most frequently traumatized element (11.2%) followed by the ulna (8.3%); 2.4% (48/2029) long bones were fractured. The modal distribution of the Kerma fractures was compared to the fracture distributions of two samples from India and Nigeria where falls were the most common cause of injury. Some characteristics of the three injury patterns were shared: males suffered the greatest frequency of injury, the economically active people (25 to 50 years of age) presented the most injuries among adults, and a small proportion of the victims had more than one major injury. However, the Kerma distribution of the fractured bones varied dramatically from the clinical injury distributions: the ulna and skull were among the least frequently injured bones in the modern samples, while the radius, humerus and lower leg were the most commonly traumatized elements among the modern people, but rare among the ancients. The configuration of the ulna and skull injuries at Kerma was characteristic of those associated with blunt force trauma in other clinical assessments and the absence of these specific lesions from the modern samples where accident was the primary injury mechanism presents a persuasive argument for interpersonal violence among the ancient Kerma people. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cycles of Civilization in Northern Mesopotamia, 4400–2000 BC

The intensification of fieldwork in northern Mesopotamia, the upper region of the Tigris-Euphrates basin, has revealed two cycles of expansion and reduction in social complexity between 4400 and 2000 BC. These cycles include developments in social inequality, political centralization, craft production and economic specialization, agropastoral land use, and urbanization. Contrary to earlier assessments, many of these developments proceeded independently from the polities in southern Mesopotamia, although not in isolation. This review considers recent data from excavations and surveys in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey with particular attention to how they are used to construct models of early urban polities.     

Early Complex Society on the North and Central Peruvian Coast: New Archaeological Discoveries and New Insights

Archaeological data from the north and central Peruvian coast are presented here as a means to explore key themes relating to social complexity, including complex society and its origins, newly resolved chronological issues, the relationship between iconography and society, and the definition of a new culture. Focusing on an early time span, from ca. 3000 to 200 cal BC, we identify key questions about the trajectory through which early Andean complexity developed, and we discuss new ideas about the chronological placement of Cerro Sechín and Chavín de Huántar. We also use an intertextual approach to study the iconography of the complex Sechín Alto polity and as a means to demonstrate duality, social hierarchy, and the origin of symbols within the society’s iconography. Finally, we highlight a newly described polity, centered in the Nepeña Valley, that is important because its urban traits presage later cultural complexity and because the recognition of this polity demonstrates the potential for similar discoveries of comparable small polities.     

Wild Food: Plants,Fish and Small Animals on the Menu for Early Holocene Populations at al-Khiday,Central Sudan

Al-Khiday, located on the bank of the White Nile in Sudan, offers an exceptionally preserved stratigraphic sequence, providing a unique opportunity to use organic residue analysis to investigate diet and subsistence during the Khartoum Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic, a period of nearly 3500 years (7000–4500 cal BC). While the vast and diverse Mesolithic fish assemblage indicates a strong reliance on products from aquatic habitats, floodplains, vegetated marshes, and open water, results from the lipid residue analysis suggest that the fish were not cooked in ceramic pots, but consumed in other ways. Rather, pots were more specialized in processing plants, including wild grasses, leafy plants, and sedges. These results, confirmed by experimental analysis, provide, for the first time, direct chemical evidence for plant exploitation in the Khartoum Mesolithic. Non-ruminant fauna (e.g., warthog) and low lipid-yielding reptiles (e.g., Adanson’s mud turtle and Nile monitor lizard), found in significant numbers at al-Khiday, were likely also cooked in pots. There is little evidence for the processing of wild ruminants in the Mesolithic pots, suggesting either that ruminant species were not routinely hunted or that large wild fauna may have been cooked in different ways, possibly grilled over fires. These data suggest sophisticated economic strategies by sedentary people exploiting their ecological niche to the fullest. Pottery use changed considerably in the Early Neolithic, with ruminant products being more routinely processed in pots, and while the exploitation of domesticates cannot be confirmed by a small faunal assemblage, some dairying took place. The results provide valuable information on Early and Middle Holocene lifeways in central Sudan.

     

Upper Paleolithic raw material economies at Üçağızlı cave, Turkey

This paper addresses variation in lithic raw material economy within the early Upper Paleolithic at Üçağızlı cave (south-central Turkey). The stratigraphic sequence documents some 12,000 years of the early Upper Paleolithic, entailing changes in lithic technology, raw material exploitation, and game use. Although the same lithic raw materials were exploited throughout the sequence to make quite similar ranges of products, there are marked changes in the ways raw materials from different source areas were treated, including patterns of transport and raw material consumption. The concept of technological provisioning is used to understand changing strategies for procuring and managing supplies of flint from different source locations. Shifts in raw material economy are argued to represent responses to changes in residential mobility and the scale/duration of occupations at the cave itself: data on cultural features and foraging strategies provide independent evidence for these shifts in land use. Results have implications for more nuanced approaches to investigating of lithic raw material economies and the significance of “raw material transfers.”     

Political Economies of Predynastic Egypt and the Formation of the Early State

Considered one of the world’s earliest examples of a pristine state, the ancient Egyptian state arose by ca. 3000 BC. State formation in Egypt became a focus of much research in the 1970s and 1980s, as investigations of the Predynastic period in Egypt, when complex society arose there, began to uncover new evidence of the indigenous roots of this phenomenon. More recently, archaeological investigations in the Delta as well as continued work in southern Egypt have provided new evidence for the changes that took place in the fourth millennium BC. But the specific events and processes involved in this major sociopolitical and economic transformation and the resultant state still remain incompletely understood. To better understand the problem in Egypt, this study looks at the contrasting polities in fourth millennium BC Egypt and Nubia from the perspective of the political economy and the strategies to power proposed by the dual-processual theory, which also helps elucidate processes of state formation and the type of early state that developed there. The territorial expansionist model helps explain where and when this state first emerged.     

Chronology of the Khartoum ‘Mesolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’ and related sites in the Sudan: statistical analysis and comparisons with Egypt

Assessment of radiocarbon measurements from the central Sudan provides the following calendrical age estimates:Early Khartoum >7000-ca 5000 BC.Early Neolithic Groupca 4900-4450 BCMiddle Neolithic Groupca 4400-3800 BCLate Neolithic Groupca 3500-2700 BCThese estimates indicate that the early Neolithic settlements in the central Sudan were established at about the same time as those at Merimda Beni Salama in the Nile Delta and the Fayum. The Predynastic sites of Upper Egypt are later in age. The Badarian at Hemamieh is probably coeval with Shaheinab. Available dates on the Badarian are younger than those for some Khartoum Neolithic sites, but the Badarian is poorly dated.

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Résumé L'evaluation de datations au radiocarbone du Soudan Central a fourni les âges absolus suivants:Early Khartoum >7000 c. 5000 BCGroupe du Néolithique inférieur c. 4900-4450 BCGroupe du Néolithique moyen c. 4400-3800 BCGroupe du Néolithique supérieur c. 3500-2700 BCCes résultats indiquent que les habitations néolithiques au Soudan Central furent établies à peu près à la même époque que celles à Merimda Beni Salama dans le Delta du Nil et au Fayoum. Les gisements prédynastiques de la Haute Egypte sont plus récents. Le Badarien à Hemamieh est probablement contemporain de Shaheinab. Les datations disponibles pour le Badarien sont plus récentes que celles de certains gisements néolithiques de Khartoum, mais le Badarien est mal daté.

     

A MICROSCOPIC STUDY OF REMAINS OF TEXTILES MADE FROM PLANT FIBRES

Summary. Plant fibres in textiles from the following sites were investigated and those not already identified as flax were identified as such: Tybrind (Mesolithic Denmark)-unidentified; Çatal Hüyük (Neolithic Turkey); the Kerma civilization of Nubia (2000 BC); Kings Road, Guernsey (Iron Age) (mineralised cloth), and eighteenth-century England. Some Bronze Age nettle fabric from Denmark was examined.
The Scanning Electron Microscope provided an invaluable aid to identification, particularly in the mineralised material. Fibre diameter measurements in the form of distributions, like those used with wool, also assisted identification, but no evolutionary changes with time were evident in these. It was possible also to make such measurements on SEM photomicrographs of the mineralised fibres.     

Complex Hunter–Gatherers in Evolution and History: A North American Perspective

A review of recent research on complex hunter–gatherers in North America suggests that age-old tensions between evolutionary and historical epistemologies continue to cultivate progress in anthropological understanding of sociocultural variation. Coupled with criticism of the evolutionary status of ethnographic foragers, archaeological documentation of variation among hunter–gatherer societies of the ancient past makes it difficult to generalize about causal relationships among environment, subsistence economy, and sociopolitical organization. Explanations for emergent complexity on the Pacific Coast that privilege environmental triggers for economic change have been challenged by new paleoenvironmental findings, while hypotheses suggesting that economic changes were preceded by, indeed caused by, transformations of existing structures of social inequality have gained empirical support. In its emergent data on mound construction apart from significant subsistence change, the southeastern United States gives pause to materialist explanations for complexity, turning the focus on symbolic and structural dimensions of practice that cannot be understood apart from particular histories of group interaction and tradition. Taken together, recent research on complex hunter–gatherers in North America has not only expanded the empirical record of sociocultural formations once deemed anomalous and/or derivative of European contact but also has contributed to the ongoing process of clarifying concepts of cultural complexity and how this process ultimately restructures anthropological theory.     

An Examination of the Spatial–Temporal Isolation Model in a Nilotic Population: Variation across Space and Time in Nubians Using Cranial Discrete Traits

Nubian biological evolution has come under much scrutiny in preceding years with strong opinions dividing scholars' beliefs as to how it occurred. A new approach is necessary to elucidate subtleties of their population structure in order to shed light on the complex subject. This study employs a spatial–temporal model in an effort to test if in situ biological evolution was the mechanism for biological change. Biological distance was calculated from the phenotype using 20 cranial discrete traits observed in Nubian samples from the sites of Semna South, Kerma, and the islands of Hesa and Biga. The periods represented at Semna South are Meroitic, X‐Group and Christian, whereas the Kerma site yielded skeletal material from the Kerma period, and the islands of Hesa and Biga date to the Christian period. Mahalanobis D² with a tetrachoric matrix was used to calculate biological distances among the samples, and three‐way Mantel tests were applied to the distance, spatial and temporal matrices. Time was not significantly correlated with biological distance. However, an inverse relationship of time and biological distance is expected under the spatial–temporal model. A lack of significant geographic correlations, as found here, is unusual in most populations, but given the spatial construct of the sites along the Nile, this relationship is not completely unexpected. The lack of significant correlation among time, space and biological distance does not support the in situ hypothesis. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Archaeological excavations at Bosutswe,Botswana: cultural chronology,paleo-ecology and economy

Excavations at the site of Bosutswe on the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana have uncovered over 4 m of deposit ranging in age from CE 700 to 1700. Our research has produced quantitative and qualitative measures of the material and ecological dimensions that structured the everyday actions and behaviors through which social identities were constituted, maintained, and transformed during the period when the polities of Toutswe, Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and Khami rose to power. By examining the material dimensions that underlay shifting relations of production, exchange, and social stratification we are able to contextualize the social judgments that ascribed value to material goods and food ways, while specifying the ways these were used to create and naturalize social relationships and power differentials. Stable isotope analyses, combined with evidence of vitrified dung, further enable us to suggest changes in herd management strategies used by the inhabitants of the site to compensate for ecological changes brought about by long-term occupation, while at the same time enabling them to economically tie subordinates to them as social divisions became more rigidly defined after CE 1300. The cultural and economic changes that took place at Bosutswe thus directly impact our understanding of the social transformations that immediately preceded contemporary configurations of ethnicity in Botswana.     

Storage adaptations among hunter–gatherers: A quantitative approach to the Jomon period

Food storage economies among hunter–gatherers have been fundamentally important in research within anthropological archeology. It is well recognized that food storage was a key element in the evolution of hunter–gatherer societies. This paper examines storage facilities utilizing a digital planimeter to evaluate the volume and morphology of storage pits in the Jomon period (ca. 13,750–500 cal. BC). Quantitative analysis of Jomon storage pits shows temporal and spatial variability in terms of size. This research demonstrates that the quantitative analysis of storage pits is an effective way to improve our understanding of storage and its role in the Jomon economy in particular and subsistence adaptations in general. Thus, this approach has potential applications to other storage economies worldwide.     

Comments on some developments in North European prehistory

The burials of the Nubian A‐Group recorded between the First and the Second Cataracts of the Nile and dated ca. 3200–2900 BC have yielded an important source material of rich and varied funerary offerings. This paper presents a case study aiming to establish a qualitative and quantitative ranking of the burials and to investigate relationships and patterns as regards age, gender and social organization, and also to study chronological implications. The results show that the A‐Group culture displayed a rather elaborate and mature social structure, perhaps organized around a female core with strong matrilineal traditions, and where the men occupied a different social sphere with their own symbolic expressions. One finds a shift from an earlier, uniformly stratified society towards a more complex structure with clear social inequality developed in Lower Nubia simultaneously‐with the emergence of the Firs t Dynasty in Egypt ca. 3000 BC.     

Nodes and edges: A network approach to hierarchisation and state formation in Japan

This paper argues that the centralised hierarchy that emerged at the beginning of the Kofun (mounded tomb) period in Japan can be explained by the locations that the polities to be hierarchised occupy and the differences in the topological potentials that these locations generate. Previous attempts of explaining the phenomenon by attributing its cause to factors such as differential access to resources and control over their distribution have been proven not to fit with the available body of evidence. The application of social network analysis-derived concepts and methods reveals that the topological locations that polities occupied generated different centralities, i.e. different degrees of connectedness to other polities and of mediating interactions between polities, which led to the hierarchisation and centralisation of their relationships. The paper concludes that the topological structure of a social network itself can be a significant cause of its own hierarchisation, and it compares the finding with the manner in which the concepts of agency and power are applied to the explanation of social hierarchisation and centralisation.     

Site maintenance practices and settlement social organization in Iron Age Karnataka, India: Inferring settlement places and landscape from surface distributions of ceramic assemblage attributes

This paper investigates the spatial organization of social relations in settlement contexts through a quantitative and distributional analysis of surface ceramic attributes from Iron Age Period (1200–300 BC) archaeological sites in Southern India. The results discern variation in depositional contexts across each site, from which I infer a variety of basic settlement activity structures (e.g., site maintenance, trash disposal, residence, animal husbandry, metallurgy, ritual). I use these results, together with further analyses of artifact and feature distributions, to infer a basic suite of places, place-making practices and some of the social relations and organizational structures that produced these historically unique Iron Age settlement landscapes.     

Prehistoric animal use on the Great Hungarian Plain: A synthesis of isotope and residue analyses from the Neolithic and Copper Age

The archaeological record of Eastern Hungary indicates that settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, ceramic style, trade patterns and mortuary customs changed from the Late Neolithic to the Copper Age (5000–2700 cal BC). Despite a rich archaeological tradition, questions remain regarding the management and use of domesticated animals and the role animal husbandry played in social change during this transition. Some researchers have hypothesized that these changes reflect a shift towards an economy that intensified its focus on primary and perhaps secondary animal products. Here we synthesize isotope data from human and animal remains and residue analysis from pottery sherds from Neolithic and Copper Age assemblages. Results indicate that the consumption and use of animal protein and fat was relatively high for both periods, with an increase in animal fats in ceramic vessels during the Middle Copper Age; however, milk products do not appear to have played an important dietary role. We conclude that livestock management remained small-scale during the Neolithic and Copper Age and that dairy use was minimal. It is proposed that the cultural changes that occurred at this time were associated with the emergence of smaller, independent farmsteads and perhaps the innovative use of secondary products like manure.     

Transformations in an early agricultural society: Feasting in the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Feasting is a powerful and transformative phenomenon. Societies are both integrated and differentiated through feasting; identities are both enacted and altered; and ideologies are inculcated. This paper uses ethnographic data to establish criteria for the archaeological recognition of prehistoric feasting. These criteria are then used to assess the changing evidence for feasting across the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic (ca. 10,200–7500 BP/9700–6250 cal BC), with the aim of shedding light on changes in social organization across the transition to agriculture.During most of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the extent and scale of feasting expanded as sociopolitical complexity increased. Towards the end of the period, however, populations dispersed and feasting probably declined. Feasts were simultaneously integrative and competitive, ameliorating scalar stress even as they offered opportunities for individual or household competition. Feasts may also have played a key role in conferring ideological prominence on Neolithic cattle, and perhaps even contributed to their adoption as domesticates.