E-87-5: Occupations Dating to the Grey Phases

Abstract

During the 1985 field season, an effort was made to locate buried living-floors that might be associated with the lakes in Section BT-A of Tarfawi. We already knew that one such occupation surface occurred at Area C (Hietala and Larson 1980: 379–388; Wendorf and Schild 1980: 58–59), and that reworked beach deposits with archaeology occurred at Area B (Wendorf and Schild 1980: 59–74). We assumed that many others existed, but were covered by later lacustrine or aeolian sediments. In 1985, as part of the search for buried living-floors, a series of 1-m² test-pits was dug at 10-m intervals in a north-south line across the northern section of the Central Basin, between BT-14 Main Excavation, and Area N. A thin but extensive sheet of aeolian sand mantled much of the surface, but occasional windows in it revealed Middle Paleolithic artifacts eroding from a low ridge of reworked Basal Sands and Gravels or of an older aeolian sand, covered by occasional thin patches of silts of the Green Phase. Almost all of the artifacts exposed in the deflational windows were heavily aeolized.