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Increased Sedentism in the Central Oases of the Egyptian Western Desert in the Early to Mid-Holocene: Evidence from the Peripheries

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Abstract

Two locations adjacent to the great central oases of the Egyptian Western Desert experienced an unusual period of sedentism in the early to mid-Holocene. Around the Southeast Basin near Dakhleh Oasis and in the Wadi el-Midauwara above Kharga, areas sharing close cultural ties, groups of slab structure sites attest to increased sedentism spanning 2,500 years. Kharga seems to have been settled fairly continuously through the two and a half millennia, but little is known of subsistence practices in this location. Dakhleh experienced two episodes of increased sedentism. Early Holocene Masara groups occupied a well-watered location within a generally dry desert. In the wetter mid-Holocene, Bashendi settlers in large stone-built sites hunted, collected wild cereals, and may have kept herds. As the desert dried after 5300 BC, the settlers switched to a life of mobile forager-herders.

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Notes

  1. For purposes of this paper, ‘lithic technological organization’ is used synonymously with the terms ‘chaîne opératoire’ and ‘lithic reduction sequence’ (cf. Shott 2003; Andrefsky 2009:68–69)

  2. Two of the bins were excavated and proved to be empty, suggesting at least that they were not for burials or trash disposal, two other functions of bins. Also they seem too small to have served as sleeping spots.

  3. The presence of goat at two sites, apparently anomalous for this time and place, remains unexplained.

  4. Simmons and Mandel (1986:118, 127) report three ‘villages’ of Terminal Palaeolithic (Midauwara Unit) age in their Transect 4 atop the Plateau at Gebel Yebsa. However, the ‘cobble features’ which they suggest might be hut circles, are clusters of cobbles rather than the rings of slabs or cobbles under discussion in this paper (Simmons and Mandel 1986, fig. 15, 16 & 17; pers. observation at KUWDE 18). Their other suggestion, that the features might be hearths or roasting features, seems more likely.

  5. At Ti-n-Torha East, five stone-walled huts leaned against the wall of a rockshelter (Garcea 2006 & Fig. 3).

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Acknowledgements

The work reported here was supported by the National Geographic Society, Grant # 7765-04, the Dakhleh Trust, the University of Calgary Department of Archaeology and, in the 2008 season, the University Research Grants Committee of the University of Calgary. I am very grateful for this support. My thanks also for the help and support of A. J. Mills, Director of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, and to my colleagues of the Dakhleh Oasis Project and the Kharga Oasis Prehistoric Project. I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, both of whom provided important and helpful comments and suggestions.

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    Mary M. A. McDonald

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McDonald, M.M.A. Increased Sedentism in the Central Oases of the Egyptian Western Desert in the Early to Mid-Holocene: Evidence from the Peripheries. Afr Archaeol Rev 26, 3–43 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-009-9046-4

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