DMP VI: Preliminary results from 2009 fieldwork on the human prehistory of the Libyan Sahara

Abstract

This paper reports on the work carried out during the 2009 field season of the prehistory sub-theme of the Desert Migrations Project. The work consisted of detailed survey and small-scale excavations in two wadis that drain the Messak Settafet, near the town of Jarma. Both wadis were found to contain evidence of Palaeolithic and Neolithic occupation, as well as of having been used as migratory routes between the Ubari and Murzuq sand seas. One of the wadis (WJAR-E-O1) was surveyed intensely along a few kilometers of its tributary margins. This revealed archaeological material ranging from Oldowan (Mode 1) to historic. The distribution of the various industries and structures had a distinct spatial patterning; the Palaeolithic scatters were spatially discrete, but Holocene remains were often found superimposed on earlier industries. Among the finds were a spatially discrete Oldowan assemblage, an extensive Acheulean industry which included the exploitation of fossil wood as a raw material, the identification of at least five major outcrops of fossil trees, and a number of more recent structures dating from Neolithic to Islamic times and consisting of graves, cairns, rock engravings, and stone features. Middle Stone Age lithics, so predominant over the surface of the Messak plateau, were absent. The second wadi (WJAR-W-02) was geomorphologically different, being comparatively narrow and deeply incised, and containing a number of terraces on the wadi bed resulting from cut and infill processes in the past. The surface of these terraces contained an extensive Aterian lithic industry, while evidence of late Holocene use of the area was also recorded in the form of Tifinagh inscriptions, rock engravings, cairns and graves. Besides mapping the archaeological distributions, a number of trenches were dug at the edge of the river terraces. These revealed an in situ stratigraphic sequence, within which Aterian lithics were found at a depth of >1 m. Samples for OSL dating were taken. Overall, the work of the 2009 field season was extremely successful in that, besides the fascinating range of archaeological material recorded and studied, it provided important insights into the role of the north-south wadis that cross the Messak, the southern boundary of the area being explored by the DMP, and their differential use in prehistory.

DMP XI: Preliminary results from 2010 fieldwork on the human prehistory in the Libyan Sahara

“…We were able to discover further Mode 1 industries in other parts of the Ubari Basin, especially in the region of the Hamada Zaqher. In combination with the ash-Shati and Messak (see Lahr et al 2009), we can now safely conclude that the Fazzan was inhabited by populations with Mode 1 technologies. These constitute the earliest forms of stone technology, and were those used by the first hominins to disperse out of Eastern Africa.…”

“…Mode 1 (Oldowan), Mode 2 (Acheulean), Mode 3 (Middle Stone Age) lithics were found, as well as extensive evidence of human presence during the Holocene, corroborating that found elsewhere. In the 2009 season, work focused on two wadis that drain the Messak Settafet escarpment near the town of Jarma, to explore the role of such wadis as routes between the two large basins in Fazzan -Ubari and Murzuq (Mirazón Lahr et al 2009). The fourth field season had four aims -first, to re-visit two archaeological localities in the Wadi ash-Shati surveyed in 2007; second, to continue to map the spatial and temporal extent of hominin occupation of the Fazzan during the Pleistocene and Holocene focusing on the southwestern margin of the Ubari Sand Sea; third, to carry out a focused survey of the main quarry identified at the MES1 locality in 2008; and fourth, to continue the analysis of the lithic material collected during previous seasons, as well as beginning analysis of the collections made this season.…”

A tentative tale of Stone Age human dynamics in Pleistocene south-western Libya (central Sahara)

“…Further substantial information comes from stratified MSA-Aterian contexts identified in the northern Messak Settafet (Foley et al 2013;Mirazón Lahr et al 2009, where the recognizable diversified set of technological features (including use of Nubian Levallois technology, blade debitage, façonnage of large bifacial tools) is further evidence for the complexity of MSA technological package(s) of the central Sahara and of its deep rooting into late Middle Pleistocene MSA African repertoire.…”

Protecting Libya's Archaeological Heritage

“…Many upland areas of the remote Sahara have some of the world's greatest prehistoric picture galleries of painted and engraved art (Mori 1965;Le Quellec 1987), increasingly damaged by the massive expansion of the hydrocarbon industry, adventure tourism, and vandalism and theft (Fig. 9), and in between, in the enormous silences of the Sahara, are relict landscapes of ancient lakes, their margins fringed with assemblages of Palaeolithic stone tools that are a priceless record of the expansion from subSaharan Africa of ancient and modern humans in the Pleistocene and of early Holocene hunter-gatherers (Cremaschi and di Lernia 1998;Lahr et al 2009), totally vulnerable to the same threats that are damaging the more visible rock art.…”