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Schematic stratigraphic sequence of a lacustrine basin in the Erg Uan Kasa. (1) Bedrock; (2) fossil dune including Acheulean artifacts; (3) bleached bedrock; (4) "Early Acacus" artifacts; (5) sand ridge; (6) green sand; (7) organic mud; (8) calcareous silt, including mollusk shell; (9) gypsum crust; (10) Acacia tree.
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Systematic surveys and excavations were carried out during the 1990–1996 field seasons in the Tadrart Acacus and surrounding areas, shedding new light on the climatic changes and cultural dynamics which occurred during the Holocene. In this paper, the geological, geomorphological, and archaeological evidence is assembled in order to provide a preli...
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Context 1
... is geological evidence for the existence of Holocene lakes and swamps both in the Erg Uan Kasa (Fig. 4) and in the Edeyen of Murzuq (Fig. 5) (Cremaschi, 1994;Cremaschi and Di Lernia 1996a,b). Only the lakes at the western fringe of the erg Uan Kasa were directly fed by tributaries, whereas the others inside the interdune corridors were derived from a rise of the water table. In both cases, the formation of the lakes was a consequence of ...
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... Similar shifts in subsistence and mobility patterns are also known from the Sahara where mobile pastoral lifeways gave way to oasis settlements following the end of the Holocene humid period, and culminated in the rise of major polities such as the Garamantian Kingdom of southern Libya (1000 BC-AD 500) [e.g. 4,5]. The Mid-Holocene herders of Arabia lacked characteristics such as sedentism and pottery production, but Levantine traits in the lithic industries, particularly distinctive types of pressure-flaked bifacial arrowheads, indicate repeated contact evident over millennia [1]. ...
Archaeological sites with surface hearths are a ubiquitous feature across the arid zones of the Arabian interior. At Jebel Oraf, in the Jubbah basin of the Nefud Desert of northern Arabia, numerous grinding stone fragments were found in association with hearths, though the original purpose of these stones was unclear owing to the poor preservation of faunal and botanic remains. Here we describe results from use-wear analysis on five grinding tools at Jebel Oraf, demonstrating that such artefacts were used during the Neolithic for plant processing, bone processing, and pigment production. Grinding stones were often broken up after initial use and fragments were subsequently re-used for alternative purposes, before finally being placed on hearths or discarded. More specifically, plants were ground or prepared and possibly cooked in the hearths, and bones were processed as well. The analyses also highlight the importance of pigment processing at Neolithic sites and provide a link to painted rock art. The frequent use of pigment in the archaeological record suggests that pigment was widely used, and that Neolithic painted art may have been more common than the surviving images suggest.
... Such a trend has been documented in the Tadrart Acacus highlands of southwestern Libya through both spatial analyses and isotopic studies (cf. Cremaschi and di Lernia, 1999;Tafuri et al., 2006;di Lernia, 2013;Biagetti et al., 2015). In similar vein, the topographic location of tumulus fields on upland areas flanking seasonal watercourses that acted as both corridors of mobility as well as sources of freshwater may be a useful framework for understanding the location of the Tabarit funerary landscapes. ...
... Although domestication centers in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, the Ganges basin, the Yangtze and Yellow River basins, and Central and South America have been accepted since the 1930s, regions of plant domestication in subtropical and tropical Africa, aside from Ethiopia, were not discussed seriously until the 1970s (Harlan 1971). Over the past 50 years, archaeobotanical excavations and carbon-14 (C-14) dates have revealed Neolithic cultures in parts of the Sahara, when the rainfall was greater than now and the flora was largely Mediterranean in nature (Cremaschi and Di Lernia 1999;Richter et al. 2017;Pausata et al. 2020). Thus, sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), one of the best-studied crops in Saharan Africa (Wasylikowa and Dahlberg 1999;Mercuri et al. 2018;Smith et al. 2019), was domesticated in the Eastern Sahel (Winchell et al. 2017(Winchell et al. , 2018, pearl During the African Humid Period (14,800-5,500 years ago; Pausata et al. 2020), which overlaps with the Neolithic and Earliest Bronze Age, the ranges of North African watermelon taxa probably were larger than they are today. ...
Iconographic evidence from Egypt suggests that watermelon pulp was consumed there as a dessert by 4,360 BP. Earlier archaeobotanical evidence comes from seeds from Neolithic settlements in Libya, but whether these were watermelons with sweet pulp or other forms is unknown. We generated genome sequences from 6,000- and 3,300-yr-old seeds from Libya and Sudan, and from worldwide herbarium collections made between 1824 and 2019, and analyzed these data together with resequenced genomes from important germplasm collections for a total of 131. Phylogenomic and population-genomic analyses reveal that (i) much of the nuclear genome of both ancient seeds is traceable to West African seed-use ‘egusi-type’ watermelon (C. mucosospermus) rather than domesticated pulp-use watermelon (C. lanatus subsp. vulgaris); (ii) the 6,000-yr-old watermelon likely had bitter pulp and greenish-white flesh as today found in C. mucosospermus, given alleles in the bitterness regulators ClBT and in the red color marker LYCB; and (iii) both ancient genomes showed admixture from C. mucosospermus, C. lanatus subsp. cordophanus, C. lanatus subsp. vulgaris, and even South African C. amarus, and evident introgression between the Libyan seed (UMB-6), populations of C. lanatus. An unexpected new insight is that Citrullus appears to have initially been collected or cultivated for its seeds, not its flesh, consistent with seed damage patterns induced by human teeth in the oldest Libyan material.
... Slightly younger cattle burials are known from places like Niger in the Talak -Timenrsoï area (Paris 2000) or Adrar Bous (Roset 1987;Paris 2000). Three structures yielded livestock remains, and may be interpreted as ‚cattle' burials or ‚stone monuments built for ceremonial purposes' were found in the Libyan Sahara (Cremaschi and Di Lernia 1999;Di Lernia 2006), where in addition not only cattle burials in tumuli were registered, but also hundreds of trapping stones, and inhumations of similar chronology. In this context, the discoveries from Wadi Khashab, in the Red Sea mountains are extremely important. ...
This volume comprises a summary of research work carried out to date in the Bargat El-Shab region. The authors present the results of the research project led by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences from 2016 to 2020, financed by the National Science Centre, Poland (grant no. 2015/17/B/HS3/01315), entitled: Awaiting the rain. Economy, Culture Beliefs Pastorials of Today’s Western Desert of Egypt.
The publication also falls back on the results of earlier studies conducted between 2005 and 2012 within the scope of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition
... Besides stratigraphic excavations, Late Acacus contexts in SW Libya are also known from regional surveys. The attribution of surface material is largely based on the presence of diagnostic decorated pottery and a few 14 C dates, with only a few sites preserving faunal remains (Anag & di Lernia, 2007;Cremaschi & di Lernia, 1999;. Albeit numerically underestimated and generally poorly preserved, surface sites indicate a capillary presence in the Tadrart Acacus massif, as well as in the surrounding regions, such as the Edeyen of Murzuq, the Erg Uan Kasa and the Wadi Tanezzuft (Fig. 5). ...
This paper focuses on a reassessment of the emergence of herding in Africa seen from the Tadrart Acacus and neighbouring regions in the Libyan central Sahara. The paper examines whether the presence of wild animals in the Early Holocene ‘green’ Sahara could have represented a ‘disease challenge’ to the spread of domestic livestock, as proposed for sub-Saharan Africa. Analysis of the zooarchaeological record and Saharan rock art highlights this potential threat also in North Africa, where it has hitherto been disregarded. Old and new data from the study area in SW Libya, with a focus on Takarkori rock shelter, highlight the presence of herding activity at a very early stage. Direct dating on bones of sheep/goat and cattle secures this chronology, providing evidence of a rapid ingression of small groups of herders who crossed Africa’s north-eastern quadrant around ~ 8300 years cal BP. This rapidity defies the ‘disease challenge’ hypothesis and suggests alternative scenarios. In the central Sahara, the cultural complexity of local Early Holocene hunter-gatherers and their delayed return system of resource exploitation could have facilitated the incorporation of new practices, including the herding of small numbers of domestic animals. The societal implications of the transition from hunting and gathering to herding are archaeologically better visible in the funerary record and in rock art. By contrast, both material culture and the subsistence basis seem to demonstrate continuity with the former foraging groups’ phase. Taken together, the Saharan evidence suggests a punctuated process of acculturation for the inception of food production in North Africa.
... Here, the mission had proficiently worked for more than half a century (e.g. Cremaschi and di Lernia 1998b;di Lernia 1999b;di Lernia and Manzi 2002;di Lernia and Zampetti 2008;Garcea 2001c;Liverani 2005;Mori 1965Mori , 2013, until the dramatic outcomes of the 2011 revolution and the post-revolutionary processes made the country definitively inaccessible to foreigners, and its heritage at risk (di Lernia 2015; di Lernia and Gallinaro 2014). Although not in a systematic way, the data are appropriately complemented by results of the geoarchaeological research activity conducted by the research teams of the Desert Migration Project-Paleo (2007 led by Marta Mirazón Lahr and Robert Foley who has been intensively investigating part of the same general area (Mattingly 2019;Mirazón Lahr et al. 2008, 2009. ...
... Exceptions do exist, like the caves and rock-shelters inside the Acacus mountains. Thanks to the preservation conditions and the studies conducted there, they still represent key reference sequences of, for example, the Aterian occupation ) and the far better preserved Holocene archaeology (Barich 1987;Cremaschi and di Lernia 1998b;Cremaschi et al. 2014;di Lernia 1999b;Garcea 2001c). ...
... As far as the Pleistocene record is concerned, around 1600 contexts have been identified so far. The very large majority is made of surface scatters, but stratified assemblages from intensively investigated cave sites are available as well (di Lernia 1999b;Garcea 2001c). ...
The area encompassing the Acacus and Messak mountains in South Western Libya, similarly to the other central Saharan massifs, is characterized by a deeply eroded landscape where Quaternary geo-archaeological archives are rare, especially Pleistocene ones, making it difficult to understand and contextualize past human dynamics within a solid chrono-paleoenvironmental framework. Except for the few caves and open-air contexts where Pleistocene sedimentary sequences are preserved, the vast majority of archaeological evidence from the region is represented by lithic artefacts found on the surface of deflated open-air sites. Nonetheless, artefacts still stand as the main references used to build a rough framework for population dynamics through time. Although the evidence is not as solid as we would like, it allows us to at least reconsider connecting the human presence solely to ‘green’ phases, as a number of population dynamics related to arid landscapes have inferably occurred in the late Middle Pleistocene and in the Late Pleistocene. Coping with changing or difficult ecological settings could have been a driver at different times for behavioral adjustment, large scale displacement, increased interactions between populations and diffusion of technological innovations.
... The investment of wealth and labour involved in the construction of large earthen mounds and megalithic monuments is considerable, as these sites contain over a thousand funerary monuments, combining earthen mounds and almost a hundred stone circles made of carefully worked laterite pillars (Gallay, 2006;Holl et al., 2007;Laporte et al., 2012;Ozanne, 1965;Thilmans et al., 1980). This pattern indicates a degree of social stratification in the wider Senegambia region, whose geographical positioning may have allowed these agricultural communities to control the flows of valuable mineral resources, such as iron and gold (Posnansky, 1973(Posnansky, , 1982 (Cremaschi & di Lernia, 1999;di Lernia, 2006di Lernia, , 2013Holl, 1998 (Levtzion, 1985;Mauny, 1961;McDougall, 1985;Robert, 1970 The presence of a stone ring around the main body of the cairn, an additional layer of elaboration that enhances the visual appearance of the monument, is a common feature of Dhar Tagant funerary monuments. Similarly, it seems to be a recurrent pattern among Lybico-Berber communities in the central and western Sahara (Gauthier, 2011) and in East Africa, where the relationship between the construction of drystone architectural features and the emergence and spread of pastoralism is particularly strong (Davies, 2013;Hildebrand & Grillo, 2012;Mack & Robertshaw, 1982;Marshall et al., 1984;Wendorf, 1998). ...
The remembrance of the dead is a ubiquitous dimension of most human societies, and the spatial dimension of mortuary practices actively constitutes an essential element of the cultural significance of certain places in the landscape. The visual prominence of stone-built funerary monuments in dry upland areas is particularly conducive to their multiscalar study through above-ground remote sensing methods. In this paper, we characterize the nature and distribution of Late Holocene drystone funerary monuments in the Dhar Tagant region of southeastern Mauritania using freely available, very high-resolution (VHR) satellite imagery. We contextualize them in relation to the monumental mortuary records of Senegal and Mali within the West African Sahel, exploring their similarities and differences with other monumental funerary landscapes in semi-arid environments. Ethical considerations and a self-reflective attitude must be at the forefront of archaeological research, and we discuss the ethics of remote sensing research in the study of funerary practices in Africa, as well as the opportunities and challenges for remote collaborative engagement with local communities in the context of fieldwork restrictions.
... Unfortunately, in East Africa they have been rarely utilised to define local-to-regional past hydrological variations. Few studies in the Sahelian and Saharan belts interpret pedological development as a marker of enhanced monsoonal activity (Cremaschi and di Lernia, 1999;Cremaschi and Trombino, 1998;Felix-Henningsen, 2000;Mauz and Felix-Henningsen, 2005;Dal Sasso et al., 2018;Williams, 2014;Zerboni et al., 2011). These studies evidence occurrence of humid events between 9 and 4 ka BP . ...
... In contrast, in the Sahelian area, aridification processes seemed to begin earlier, between 6 and 5.5 ka cal. BP (Amaral et al., 2013;Cremaschi and di Lernia, 1999;Lézine et al., 2011Lézine et al., , 1990, together with the consolidation of herding practices (Hoelzmann et al., 2001;Kuper and Kröpelin, 2006). We propose that the air moisture mass dynamics which were responsible for the de- (Fick and Hijmans, 2017). ...
During the last fourteen thousand years, East Africa was the locus of significant climatic and cultural changes, which highly affected landscape evolution and prehistoric ways of life. Enhanced monsoonal precipitations over the tropics, mainly driven by Earth’s precessional and eccentricity orbital parameters, were the primary causes of the African Humid Period (AHP; ~14 - ~6 ka). This humid period led to the transgression of continental lacustrine waterbodies, the increase of fluvial discharge and the spread of vegetation cover over the present-day desertic regions. The onset and the end of this wetter phase were not homogeneous across the continent, and the AHP was punctuated by centennial-scale episodes of hyper-aridity which varied in time and in space. This highly variable environmental scenario was the theatre of one of the most important socio-economic changes in human history, that of the transition between the last hunters-gatherers and the first food production societies. The concomitance of such cultural transformations and climatic disruptions raises the question of the role of changing environmental conditions on the distribution patterns of new socio-economic practices, namely herding.The Ethiopian Highlands (EH) represent a major receiver of monsoonal precipitations in East Africa. During the AHP, substantial variations of the monsoon regime affected the functioning of the hydro-systems originating in the EH. This included the Blue Nile River and Lake Abhe, the endorheic receptacle of the Awash River waters, and located in the northern East African Rift System (EARS). Additionally, the Nile valley and the EARS, constituted the main corridors for prehistoric human trajectories across the Horn of Africa. With the aim to better understand human-climate coevolution during this crucial period a multiscale and multidisciplinary approach is proposed.First, I decipher Holocene climatic variations from the functioning of the two main EH-originated hydro-systems by: a) tracking exceptional Blue Nile paleo-flood frequencies using a high resolution study of a laminated sequence from the Nile Deep Sea Fan deposits, and b) reconstructing the hydrological fluctuations of paleo-Lake Abhe (Ethiopia, Djibouti), from the study of wave-dominated clastic paleo-shoreline sequences. Second, I characterize the impact of hydro-climatic changes on littoral paleolandscape evolution along the Lake Abhe basin. And finally, I estimate the interactions between climatic induced landform dynamics and human occupations with respect to the main socio-economic shifts that occurred over the same lacustrine basin.This study improves our comprehension of the spatial-temporal patterns of Holocene hydro-climate in East Africa: a strong and stable monsoonal regime has been evidenced between ~11 and ~9 ka BP, followed by a stepwise ardification until the end of the AHP. Moreover, belated Mid-Holocene humid conditions in the Northern Rift suggest that the Congo Air Boundary had a significant role on rainfall controls in this area. Additionally, evaluating the interplay between climatic-, geomorphic- and tectonic-induced sedimentary transfer mechanisms over the investigated basins allowed us to localise some hydro-sedimentary processes decoupled from climatic forcing and to propose a diachronic palaeolandscape reconstitution of the Lake Abhe basin for this period.Early Holocene Lake Abhe waters and environments were strongly exploited by hunter-fisher-gatherers until the last lake drop around ~4.5 ka BP, when herding practices were integrated in this region. Associations between prehistoric settlements and Holocene hydrological variations demonstrate how humans were extremely reactive to fluctuating lake environments and how new socio-economic practices were often adapted to specific local to regional environmental trajectories.
... Several lines of evidence such as paleo-lake-level reconstructions (Holmes & Hoelzmann, 2017;Lézine et al., 2011;Street-Perrott et al., 1989), vegetation reconstructions (Hoelzmann et al., 1998;Prentice et al., 2000), eolian (deMenocal et al., 2000) and leaf wax (Tierney et al., 2017) deposits in sedimentary cores in the Eastern Atlantic, observations of cave paintings depicting a lush landscape (Almásy, 1934;Barth, 1857;di Lernia, 2017), and other archaeological findings supporting human habitation (Cremaschi & Di Lernia, 1999;Dunne et al., 2012;Gabriel, 1987;Hoelzmann et al., 2001;Manning & Timpson, 2014;Kröpelin, 2004;Sereno et al., 2008) have led to compelling and undisputed understanding that northern Africa was considerably wetter and greener than today during an interval stretching from the end of the Younger-Dryas at 11,500 to roughly 5,000 years before present (BP). This interval, which has come to be referred to as the African Humid Period (AHP) or the Green Sahara Period, was just the most recent in several precessionally forced wet-dry cycles (Larrasoaña et al., 2013) through the Sahara desert's long, at least 2.5 Myr, but contested age (Kröpelin, 2006;Schuster et al., 2006;. ...
Plain Language Summary
From approximately 11,000 to 5,000 years before present, the summer monsoon over northern Africa was considerably stronger than what it is today and as such this period has come to be called the African Humid Period. As a result of this, lakes, wetlands, and rivers sprung up in the now arid regions of northern Africa and made it possible for vegetation to migrate northward which “greened the Sahara.” It is widely understood that the greater amount of summer solar radiation impinging on this region, arising from a modest variation in the Earth's orbital configuration at that time, kick‐started this intensification. However, while this may have triggered the strengthening of the monsoon, it was not by itself sufficient to intensify it to the degree suggested by proxies that register the strength of palaeomonsoons. The interaction between the atmosphere and the greener and wetter land surface could have further invigorated the monsoon, but based on the results from modeling experiments performed thus far, it has been thought that even this additional interaction is not sufficient. Here, we show that land‐atmosphere interaction does however have the potential to strengthen the monsoon sufficiently to obtain agreement with proxy estimates.
... Initially, people integrated herding into extant fisher-forager lifeways, while maintaining the widespread use of wavy-line pottery, barbed bone points and microlithic and bifacial toolkits (Sutton 1977;Holl 2005). As herding became more important, groups gradually increased their investment in systematic lithic raw-material acquisition, and reorganised their lithic chaîne opératoire (Cremaschi & di Lernia 1999;Garcea 2005). Aridity in the early Middle Holocene pushed herders southward. ...
Lithic technological strategies of the earliest herders at Lake Turkana, northern Kenya - Volume 93 Issue 372 - Steven T. Goldstein
