Palaeoenvironment and Holocene land use of Djara, Western Desert of Egypt

Kindermann, Karin; Bubenzer, Olaf; Nussbaum, Stefanie; Riemer, Heiko; Darius, Frank; Pöllath, Nadja; Smettan, Ursula

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2005.12.005

Cited by 43 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…This species is currently found on the coastal plain of Egypt and the Negev of Israel. In addition, the presence of domesticated sheep in Djara, which can go without water for several days in the low-temperature winter season, suggests occupation events, which predominantly took place during the winter season (Kindermann et al, 2006).…”

Section: The Holocene Wet Phase Chronologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene climatic change and human settlement between the central Sahara and the Nile Valley: Archaeological and geomorphological results

Bubenzer¹,

Riemer²

2007

Geoarchaeology

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Supraregional investigations of the Holocene occupational history of the eastern Sahara west of the Nile combined with the study of climatic, environmental, and geomorphological archives were carried out in contrasting desert regions from the Mediterranean coast strip to Wadi Howar in Sudan. The research areas are located far away from groundwater influence and are therefore capable of indicating environmental changes. Climatic development in accordance with nearly 500 14C dates from archaeological sites indicates a Holocene optimum lasting from approximately 9500 B.P. till the beginning of the drying trend that set in about 6300 B.P. (9000–5300 cal. B.C.). Although the faunal and floral remains are arid types, they indicate slightly wetter conditions than today. Surface water was the key factor that influenced the adaptation strategies of the mobile hunter‐gatherers (and in some parts, the pastoralists) in the desert regions. Large episodic camp sites agglomerated at favorable drainage systems and water pools, and settlement patterns strongly correlate with the paleohydrological factors examined with remote sensing cartography, geomorphological work, and the analysis of digital elevation models. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Section: The Holocene Wet Phase Chronologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene climatic change and human settlement between the central Sahara and the Nile Valley: Archaeological and geomorphological results

Bubenzer¹,

Riemer²

2007

Geoarchaeology

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“…In Dakhleh Oasis, the earliest radiocarbon dates fall around 8300 cal BC (McDonald 2001). In the mid-Holocene, the Mediterranean rainfall belt expanded southward, bringing winter rains to much of the Western Desert (Haynes, 1987;Goodfriend 1991;Neumann 1993;Arz et al 2003;Kindermann et al 2006). The humid period persisted until ca.…”

Section: Environmental Background For the Early And Mid-holocenementioning

confidence: 99%

“…K. Neumann (1993:164) and C. V. Haynes (1987; see also Arz et al 2003;Goodfriend 1991) have suggested that the Mediterranean winter rainfall belt may have moved southwards, to at least the latitude of Dakhleh. Evidence for winter rains has been reported from Djara to the northeast of Dakhleh (Kindermann et al 2006), from Farafra Oasis to the northwest after 5800 cal BC (Hassan et al 2001), and from the Gilf Kebir in southwest Egypt, but only after 4300 cal BC (Linstädter and Kröpelin 2004). In Dakhleh, the acacias lack the growth rings so prominent in the Masara C charcoal (Thanheiser 2008:127).…”

Section: Economy and Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

McDonald

2009

Afr Archaeol Rev

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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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“…By the 6th millennium BCE, pastoralism was evident through the presence of domesticated cattle and ovicaprid bones in campsites from the Red Sea to Chad (McDonald 1998). By the beginning of the 5th millennium BCE the climate had begun shifting toward greater aridity (Bubenzer and Riemer2007;Kindermann et al 2006;Kuper and Kröpelin 2006;Nicoll 2001;Riemer et al 2013;Wendorf et al 2001). By 3500 BCE deserts were only suitable for transit and occupation at a few oases.…”

Section: Overview Of Socio-economic Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rising aridity in the deserts from the late 6th millennium BCE onward led more and more people to settle in the Nile Valley (Bubenzer and Riemer2007;Kindermann et al 2006;Kuper and Kröpelin 2006;Nicoll 2001;Riemer et al 2013;Wendorf et al 2001). In the 6th millennium BCE, the number of known habitation sites in Egypt are few, and these were primarily located in the deserts, where the subsistence economy was based on mobility with both foraging and some limited herding of domesticated animals (Linseele et al 2014;.…”

Section: Contextualizing Specialization In Egyptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Prestige: A Ritual Production Model for Stone Tool Specialization in Naqada Period Egypt

Skarzynski¹

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This dissertation looks at the organization and development of specialized production in 4th millennium BCE Egypt. At the outset of this period northeastern Africa was occupied by small-scale groups of pastoralists and early agriculturalists. By the close of the 4th millennium BC, the Nile Valley was one of the earliest instances of a society with centralized political organization, extensive labor division, and institutionalized inequalities.This research brings data on stone tools and settlement sites to bear on competing models of specialization. Many models of specialized production have focused either on the production of symbolically meaningful goods for the elite, or the production of utilitarian goods for the masses; they have not considered the production of symbolically meaningful goods for commoners. In Egypt the prevailing theory for the development of specialized production is a prestige-goods model, where elites sponsored the production of items used to display status and which were not available to all. However, this model does not account for all specialized production. A review of the evidence for specialization in Egypt shows that some items made by specialists were quite widely used (e.g., lithic blades, black-topped red ware ceramics), and so do not fit a prestige-goods model. To explore how the production of various stone tools was organized and developed, a model of ritual production outlined by Spielmann (2002) was considered. This model recognizes that people have often increased their economic production in order to make items needed for ritual activities, such as life cycle events (e.g., birth, marriage, death) and community-encompassing rituals. These ritual activities involved many members of society, not a restricted subset. Expectations were developed for archaeological patterns of raw material choice, production locations, and find contexts that should be observed if the ritual production model can account for the development of some aspects of specialized production in -ivEgypt. These expectations were evaluated based on examination of lithic artifact collections from the settlement sites of el-Mahâsna, Abydos, and Nag el-Qarmila, and comparison to published data from other sites and online museum databases. This research showed that there were many different ways that stone tool production was organized at the intra-site and regional levels. Some of stone tools-early fishtail knives, axes, large-blade knives, and microendscrapers-fit the ritual production model for the development of specialized production quite well. Preferences for certain raw materials were evident, and these preferences could not be accounted for by functional considerations or access to local resources. Instead, the raw material choices probably related to the symbolic significance of their colors, which can be traced from the Pharaonic back to the Predynastic periods. These tools were produced in conjunction with ritual activity areas, and the tools themselves were found in ritually significant cont...

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Palaeoenvironment and Holocene land use of Djara, Western Desert of Egypt

Cited by 43 publications

References 39 publications

Holocene climatic change and human settlement between the central Sahara and the Nile Valley: Archaeological and geomorphological results

Holocene climatic change and human settlement between the central Sahara and the Nile Valley: Archaeological and geomorphological results

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

Beyond Prestige: A Ritual Production Model for Stone Tool Specialization in Naqada Period Egypt

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