Sites E-77-1 and E-94-3: Two Neolithic Sites Near Gebel Nabta

Abstract

One of the more prominent physiographic features in southwestern Egypt, south of the Eocene plateau, is Gebel Nabta. It is among the highest, if not the highest inselberg in this region. The base of the gebel is Cretaceous Nubia sandstone over which are limestones of Paleocene and Eocene age. To the south of Gebel Nabta is a large, oval deflational basin about 3.5 km long and 3 km wide. Like the rest of this desert, the basin today is a barren landscape of brown and tan rocks and occasional barcan dunes. There are, however, three small phytogenic dunes around clumps of now dead tamarisk bushes on the floor of the basin in its lowest part. It is these clumps of vegetation that led our Bedowin workers to call this Gebel Nabta, or “hill with little bushes.” This basin drains to the north and east into Nabta Playa in a wadi that has cut a deep trough between a Nubia Sandstone ridge on the east and the footslopes of Gebel Nabta on the west.