Philip Van Peer

The Nile corridor and the out-of-Africa model - An examination of the archaeological record

This paper addresses the question of whether archaeological data—especially data from the Middle Palaeolithic—are relevant to current discussion on the origin and dispersal of modern humans. The structure of the Middle Paleolithic record of the Lower Nile Valley and adjacent deserts, a key region in the Out‐of‐Africa model, is examined. On the basis of the present database two archaeological complexes can be established: the Nubian complex and the Lower Nile Valley complex. In the Nubian complex, which appears in the Lower Nile Valley during the late Middle Pleistocene and coexists with a Lower Nile Valley complex issuing from the local Acheulean, hunting was a major subsistence strategy. From the last interglacial on the Nubian complex is found beyond the valley, whereas the Lower Nile Valley complex remains restricted to its riverine environment. Here, a technological transition to an Upper Palaeolithic type of production is attested as a punctuated event around 40,000 years ago at the latest. The appea...This paper addresses the question of whether archaeological data—especially data from the Middle Palaeolithic—are relevant to current discussion on the origin and dispersal of modern humans. The structure of the Middle Paleolithic record of the Lower Nile Valley and adjacent deserts, a key region in the Out‐of‐Africa model, is examined. On the basis of the present database two archaeological complexes can be established: the Nubian complex and the Lower Nile Valley complex. In the Nubian complex, which appears in the Lower Nile Valley during the late Middle Pleistocene and coexists with a Lower Nile Valley complex issuing from the local Acheulean, hunting was a major subsistence strategy. From the last interglacial on the Nubian complex is found beyond the valley, whereas the Lower Nile Valley complex remains restricted to its riverine environment. Here, a technological transition to an Upper Palaeolithic type of production is attested as a punctuated event around 40,000 years ago at the latest. The appearance of the Nubian complex in the northern reaches of the Nile Valley would seem to correspond to the Out‐of‐Africa model of dispersal. However, the general reconstruction of behavioural repertoires from archaeological evidence does not satisfactorily correspond to the patterning expected according to either that model or its alternative. It is concluded that the Middle Palaeolithic record of Northeast Africa is the product of different populations with modern behavioural capacities. Their particular organisations of the subsistence domain and even their migrations are revealed in archaeological patterns of variability and change, but the record holds no evidence of anatomical constraints on this capacity for modern behaviour or of the social mechanisms by which it might have been transmitted.

The "Chaîne opératoire" approach in Middle Paleolithic Archaeology

Since the pioneering days of Paleolithic archaeology in western Europe, the making of stone tools has received special attention. Numerous studies were aimed at creating systematic typologies of artifacts based on descriptions of their technical features and morphological attributes. Recently, the concept of chaîne opératoire, or “operational sequence” (sometimes called “core reduction sequence”), borrowed from French social anthropologists, has been introduced into the study of Old World prehistory. Its conceptual framework is focused on the recognition of the overall technology and the practical skills of the prehistoric knapper in employing a particular technique responsible for the transformation of raw material to tools. Although the stone objects of all periods received attention, those of the Middle Paleolithic—due to issues such as the significance of lithic variability in retouched tools, the demise of the Neanderthals, or the emergence of “modern behavior”—have been at the forefront. This paper discusses the definition of chaîne opératoire and its practice and demonstrates that as a system of classification, it is overformalized and provides but an illusion of reading the minds of prehistoric knappers. The need to pay more attention to the recognition of patterning in the technological information is essential if we wish to go beyond a formal type list of knapping products. We argue that an elaborate, complex typology of core reduction products and discrete chaînes opératoires is an approach that impedes informed behavioral interpretations by forcing a rigid framework of “technical” definitions on the prehistoric lithic technologies.

Aspects of tool production, use, and hafting in Palaeolithic assemblages from Northeast Africa

A detailed microwear study was performed on several assemblages from Northeast Africa to provide an anthropological scenario of late middle and upper Pleistocene populations in the Nile Valley and adjacent zones. Results are presented from the wear analysis of five sites, and an interpretation is provided of the keystones of MSA behaviour and its evolution throughout about 150,000 years. Locally available raw materials were predominantly used. Different tool uses were identified based on wear evidence, and it was demonstrated that stone tools were hafted from at least the early MSA onwards. In particular stone tools for which hafting was a necessity for their use, such as percussion implements and projectiles, were hafted. Both tool functions remain important throughout the Middle Stone Age. For tools with other uses, such as knives, hafting was demonstrated in certain cases. Hafting proved to be integrated into the stone tool production process, indicating a certain degree of anticipation and planning. Ochre was present at most of the sites in different forms, and mainly seems to have served a utilitarian function, and a possible symbolic use. The included sites could be interpreted as specialised sites, and in all but one case were situated in a production context. The evidence indicates the existence of a regional settlement system with different logistic nodes.

Interassemblage variability and levallois styles: The case of the northern african middle palaeolithic☆

Abstract The potential of a particular category of artifacts, Levallois flakes, with regard to the explanation of Middle Palaeolithic lithic variability is examined in this paper. After an assessment of the way in which Levallois reductions operate in different site contexts, 45 Levallois flake samples representing different taxonomic groups in the Northern African Middle Palaeolithic are treated in an attribute analysis. In attempts to explain the observed variability pattern, which is largely concordant with the traditionally recognized assemblage groups, environmental, chronological, and stylistic factors must be taken into account. Two important points emerge. First, diachronic changes are evident in various aspects of Levallois flake samples. Second, the apparent equation between Levallois style groups and traditional taxonomy may indicate that the latter at least partly represents culturally different groups.

Technological Systems, Population Dynamics, and Historical Process in the MSA of Northern Africa

This paper presents an alternative historical interpretation of regional patterns in MSA lithic industries of northern Africa, based on the observation that our current systematics often disguise real similarities and differences in the archaeological record. With regard to the early MSA, it is argued that the geographical distribution of the Sangoan is much wider than previously acknowledged and that it is present up to the Mediterranean coast. It may be the archaeological signature of an early expansion of anatomically modern humans. From the Last Interglacial onward, the distribution of the Nubian Complex records population influx in the eastern Sahara and in regions east of the Nile, including the Red Sea mountains and the Arabian peninsula. During the middle part of MIS 5, human populations in many parts of northern Africa may have been small or even absent. It is only in its final phase that this tendency is reversed again and that Late Nubian Complex sites frequently occur in the entire eastern range of the Saharan-Arabian belt. To the west, the Late Nubian Complex has a marked boundary and it is argued that the Aterian of the Central Sahara records a phenomenon of cultural assimilation between western and eastern populations. All these demographic processes are triggered by the aridification of northern Africa, ultimately leading to a phase of profound cultural and social change of which an Upper Palaeolithic mode of production is the outcome.

Holocene environmental changes in the Gebel Umm Hammad, Eastern Desert, Egypt

Abstract Gebel Umm Hammad in the Red Sea Mountains east of Quseir, Egypt, today enjoys small but irregular amounts of winter rain, enabling the widening of joint controlled openings in the Thebes Limestone. Cavities are especially affected by flaking, while rock fragmentation is more active on the outside. The sedimentological and botanical study of fan deposits at the outlet of a karstic shaft in the Tree Shelter showed the local Holocene environmental evolution. Three periods of different degree of aridity can be considered: (i) Before 8120±45 BP (UtC-5389), bedload aggradation points to rare but occasionally heavy rains, lasting for several hours, attaining intensities of more than 76 mm/h and covering some 20 km2. Wadi flash floods occasionally attained bankfull stage. (ii) Since 8120±45 BP (UtC-5389), such heavy rains have not occurred in the Egyptian Red Sea Mountains. Instead, a more moderate but maybe wetter precipitation regime was established. The karstic shafts were active, and there was water and life in the desert. Two humid pulses can be distinguished within this period. The first occurs at ±8000 BP, the second between 6630±45 (GrN-22560) and 6770±60 BP (GrN-22562). (iii) After the last wet culmination, there was a gradual shift to drier conditions. Shortly after ±5000 BP, modern climatic conditions are believed to have been attained. Today, the occasional rain storms are less heavy than before ±8000 BP. Bankfull stage river floods do not occur. Instead, secondary channels are eroded in the wadi beds. The general arid character during the whole period and the inherent local and temporal variations in precipitation patterns might explain apparent aberrations between the palaeoenvironmental evolution of the Tree Shelter site and other remote study areas in Egypt and Sudan.

Geomorphologic context and proposed chronostratigraphic position of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts from the Op de Schans pit near Kesselt (Belgium) to the west of Maastricht

In July 2007 an important archaeological find was made in the Op de Schans loess pit near Kesselt (Belgian Limburg) immediately to the west of the Dutch city of Maastricht. During an archaeological rescue dig, three Lower Palaeolithic artefacts were recovered from the infill of an ancient erosion gully: a bifacial side-scraper, an atypical biface and a cortical flake. Typologically, the artefacts can be classified as Acheulean. In this region, harbouring several such brickyard pits, these are the oldest artefacts yet found, prompting further investigations into the stratigraphic position of the archaeological layer. The Op de Schans pit, which has yielded several Middle Palaeolithic occupation horizons, is located in the middle of an ancient sediment trap. Because of this exceptional geomorphologic situation, multiple ancient sediments have been preserved which elsewhere were entirely removed during subsequent erosion phases. Here five separate loess beds with intercalated interglacial palaeosols are present, overlying the deposits of the River Maas (Meuse). This sequence has been used as a hypothetical framework for elaborating a chronostratigraphic model. The archaeological level in question, discovered at the base of a subsequently infilled erosion gully, can most likely be chronostratigraphically dated to around the start of Marine Isotope Stage 10 (MIS 10), in the era of the Pottenberg discordance (approx. 390 ka). However, the possibility cannot be excluded that the gully in which the artefacts were found dates from an early phase of MIS 12 (approx. 480 ka). The age may in fact be greater still, as the artefacts have been eroded out of their original, primary context and subsequently deposited in the gully. Hypothetically, they may even have been taken up from the Maas loam of the Kesselt Maas terrace (MIS 13) that here is situated directly below the archaeological horizon. This would make the maximum age of the artefacts recovered from the gully around 500 ka.

The Middle Holocene Shell Mound of el Gouna on the Red Sea (Egypt)

Abstract In the El Gouna (Hurghada) area on the Red Sea of Egypt, a Middle Holocene shell mound from around 5800 B.P. (uncalibrated radiocarbon years before A.D. 1950) has been tested by a restricted excavation. Collection of shellfish on the Red Sea shore provided subsistence opportunities for Middle Holocene groups coeval with the Early Predynastic Tasian of the Nile Valley. The El Gouna site demonstrates for the first time that prehistoric shell mounds exist near the Egyptian Red Sea shore.