From Complex Hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Sahara to the Early Nile Neolithic
Karin Kindermann & Heiko Riemer (University of Cologne, Institute of Prehistoric
Archaeology, African Archaeology)
ABSTRACT
The beginning of food production in the Nile Valley appears as a highly complex and
multicausal phenomenon, coinciding with a number of fundamental environmental and cultural
changes. In all its facets, it can only be interpreted as a long-term, episodic process with various
protagonists, and changing conditions for cultural contact and exchange. This together with the
deficient archaeological data have yet hampered tracing even the basic lines and modes how,
where, and when the Neolithic developed.
As viewed from the Saharan ecozone, especially from the Western Desert, two phenomena
appear as of importance: Firstly, earliest domesticated animals occur in low percentages in
Saharan hunter-gatherer communities, at latest from 6000 calBC onwards, predating the earliest
Neolithic at the Nile. It appears that this development goes along with a trend towards cultural
complexity in hunter-gatherers showing a shift towards pottery production, more residential
campsites, intensified plant exploitation, and the like. Secondly, in tandem with the beginning
climatic trend towards aridity from the late 6th millennium onwards, Saharan core areas were
abandoned and people retreated to more favored landscapes, such as the oases and the Nile
Valley. Seasonal contacts between the oases and the Nile Valley are already evident for the
periods predating the onset of dryer condition. Yet the almost identical lithic material of the
Fayum Neolithic with the preceding sites in the oases and the limestone plateau signals that
communities from the desert began to concentrate and settle down in the Fayum and possibly
in other locations along the Nile.