The pattern of Neolithization in Dakhleh Oasis in the Eastern Sahara

摘要

The Neolithic, characterized by V.G. Childe as a critical turning point in the human chronicle, entailed a major economic change, the domestication of plants and animals, plus accompanying changes in settlement patterns, technologies and ideology. Once fully developed in the Near East, it was spread to Europe and a few spots on the North African coast by colonists carrying the full 'Neolithic package'. But for most of North Africa, Neolithization consisted of indigenous groups choosing elements of the Neolithic package most appropriate to the local environment. In northeastern Africa, colonies with the full package may have been established at Merimde in the Nile Delta, and perhaps in the Fayum, but beyond that, the spread seems to have been by cultural diffusion. For the Egyptian Western Desert, the evidence from Dakhleh Oasis suggests that livestock, which arrived independently of the rest of the package, was the only element of the Near Eastern Neolithic to be accepted. Otherwise, the post-Pleistocene adaptation seems to have been an indigenous development, rooted in the local natural environment. This environment was basically a desert, better-watered in the early to mid-Holocene, but even then subject to short arid episodes. Subsistence consisted of hunting and intensively exploiting rich stands of wild African cereals such as sorghum, plus legumes and fruits. 'Neolithic' technologies were developed locally, independently of the Near East, to exploit these resources. Pottery with impressed decoration, for instance, appeared in the southern part of the desert at the beginning of the Holocene, and gradually moved northward into the Egyptian desert where it may have inspired a new undecorated pottery tradition. Bifacially-knapped implements like arrowheads and knives are different enough from their Near Eastern equivalents in form, dimensions and production sequences that they arguably were developed locally, starting in the early-Holocene. Dakhleh witnessed two episodes of increased sedentism, one in the early Holocene in response to an arid episode, the second in the mid-Holocene, under quite favourable rainfall conditions. These episodes transformed the original hunter-gatherer groups socially and ideologically to the point where they could readily accept livestock when it arrived, and started them on the road to increased social complexity. The onset of aridification ca. 7250 cal BP forced the oasis-dwellers out of their settled sites. The flocks and herds of the now-mobile groups remained, in the African pattern, a relatively minor element within a multi-resource pastoralism. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.