What Forced the Prehistoric Cattle-Keepers to Emigrate from the Red Sea Mountains?

Abstract

Ab stractTo day's desert area of Red Sea Hills is now in hab ited by a Beja-Bisharin tribe, the camel breed ers. In pre his toric times, this area was in hab ited or pen e trated by pas to ral com mu ni ties en gaged in cat tle breed ing. Their oc cu pa tion is pri mar ily marked by thou sands of en grav ings with rep re sen ta tions of long-horned cat tle, which were dis cov ered in a rock art gal lery in Bir Nurayet, one of the larg est rock art gal ler ies in Af rica and the whole world. We still do not know when the shep herds and their herds aban doned the area. This is sue can be ad dressed by geoarchaeology and in ves ti gation of sed i ments dis cov ered in Wadi Diib, i.e. silts. As we be lieve, they re cord cli mate and en vi ron men tal changes tak ing place in re cent mil len nia, which prob a bly to a large ex tent de ter mined the socio-cul tural pro cesses in the area.Key words: cat tle-keep ers, Red Sea Hills, Su dan, chro nol ogy of rock art IN TRO DUC TIONThe aim of this pa per is to pres ent some is sues re gard ing the chro nol ogy of the ar chae o log i cal site Bir Nurayet, discov ered lately in Su dan which, as we be lieve, can be addressed with the help of geoarchaeology.Bir Nurayet is a name of a place lo cated in the Red Sea Hills at the foot of a lonely moun tain Jebel Magardi. This beau ti ful moun tain with a char ac ter is tic phal lic shape dom inates in the land scape of Wadi Diib. In the vi cin ity of the Magardi there is one of the larg est rock art gal ler ies on the Af ri can con ti nent, ac com pa nied by rel ics of camps, set tlement sites and cem e ter ies of com mu ni ties liv ing in the area from the early pre his tory un til mod ern times.The con cen tra tion of rock art was dis cov ered at the turn of 1998/1999 by the Pol ish ar chae ol o gist Krzysztof Pluskota and the Dutch writer and pho tog ra pher Arita Baaijens, who pen e trated the area while trav el ling with a camel car a van along the route of an cient gold mines (Pluskota, 2003(Pluskota, , 2006. RE GIONAL SET TINGBir Nurayet is lo cated in the Red Sea Hills (north-east ern Su dan), in the cen tral part of Wadi Diib (Val ley of Wolves), which con sti tutes an axis of an im mense drain age sys tem of this part of the moun tains that drains sea son ally its wa ters into the Red Sea near Marsa Abu El Qasim (Egypt), ap prox imately 130 km north of Nurayet. It is the heart of the Beja Bisharin tribe's ter ri tory, circa 60 ki lo me ters south of the Egyp tian-Su da nese bor der, 100 ki lo me ters west of the Red Sea Shore and 500 ki lo me ters east from Nile Val ley (Fig. 1). MA TE RIAL AND METH ODSIn the vi cin ity of Bir Nurayet the east ern edge of Wadi Diib is made of ex ten sively par ti tioned and eroded hills built of sand stone (un pub lished petrographic anal y ses by M. Mrozek-Wysocka, In sti tute of Ge ol ogy, Adam Mickiewicz Uni ver sity, Poznañ, 2012). The west ern edge, on the other Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/13/18 5:14 AM

Between the Nile and the Red Sea

“…13 For descriptions of Beja transhumance and herding strategies, see Hjort & Dahl (1991:134-150). 14 Bobrowski, et al 2013. For epigraphic evidence of this, see also (Cooper in press). 15 Smither 1945:7-8. between the nile and the red sea Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia (2021) 1-22 | 10.1163/26670755-01010001 Downloaded from Brill.com11/08/2021 02:03:45AM 6 one 'child' .16 Such sources give some indication of the basic travelling family unit -the major unit of social importance in pastoralist nomadic spheres.…”

Beyond the Nile: Long term Patterns in Nomad-State Interactions across Northeast Africa

“…38 (35)). See also Moreno Garcia (2014, p. 46) 12 Jesse et al (2004); Bobrowski et al (2013). 13 See di Lernia (2013); Chaix (2001).…”