Posted: April 2nd, 2015

Learning from Comparison & Neolithic Africa vs. the Fertile Crescent

Learning from Comparison & Neolithic Africa vs. the Fertile Crescent

• Inter-site comparisons: look at the similarities and differences between two or more sites
  • Expands the sample size
  • Allows us to build a broader understanding of how and why
  • Explore possible drivers of cultural change by seeing how things turned out similarly or differently over space and time
• Regional level synthesis:
  • Aggregate archaeological data over a larger region
  • Study synchronic and diachronic variation in cultural traits
  • Often difficult to do in practice
    • Differences in documentation
    • Availability of reports and raw data
  • Ethnoarchaeology (type of comparison): studying living groups to see the “archaeological” record forming
    • Socio-cultural ethnography
      • Garbage
      • Structures
      • Depositional bias (what do people throw away vs. toss in the woods, what is organic and not likely to keep in the record)
      • Technology manufacturing
    • Why do we do it?
      • Interpretation difficult with no reference point
        • Stone tools once thought to be caused by lightening
      • Archaeologists are less familiar with hunter gathering than hunter gatherers are
        • Insight into perceptions of natural world
        • Cultural contact influences spread of ideas and trade goods
        • How to use prehistoric tools
      • Source of hypotheses to test against material remains
        • Expands limits of our imagination
      • Things we learned from ethnoarchaeology:
        • Flintknapping
        • Ground stone manufacture
        • Bead manufacture
        • Atlatls (bannerstones)
        • Poison tipped points
      • Preservation bias:
        • Case study in Ethiopia:
          • “tef” was a particular grain; roasting it isn’t necessary to manufacture into flour and bread
          • So the charring of the seed, etc – wasn’t done
            • So looking at the record, we would see other grains, but we wouldn’t see tef
          • So: potential immensity of the gap between what we find and what there was
        • Tyranny of the ethnographic record:
          • Range of possible behaviours much broader
            • Much more possible than what we see in current HG populations
            • Past conditions different
          • Reproduce ethnoarchaeology in the archaeological record
          • Emphasized bottom-up approach of “strong inference”
        • Experimental archaeology (another type of comparison):
          • Replicating aspects of material culture to better understand them and the behaviour needed to make them
          • Hands-on approach
          • Flintknapping is a very common skill among archaeologists
        • Things we learned from flintknapping:

1. How to recognize:

• Flakes
• Variation in manufacturing
• Tools used in manufacturing

2. Importance of debitage patterns (debitage is the debris)
3. Strength of Neanderthals
4. Importance of raw material
5. Conservation of raw material
6. Heat-treatment

• Use-wear studies:
  • Replicate use of tools to study damage and polish development
  • Another type of experimental archaeology
• Another type of experimental archaeology = re-enactments

Neolithic Transition in Northern Africa

• Fertile Crescent:
  • Favourable environment allowed for intensive harvest of wild grains and pulses
    • This allowed for sedentism
    • With this came population increase, complexity increase, organized villages and symbolism, and then after that, domestication
  • Extensive human occupation of the Sahara (14-4.5kya)
    • It used to not be a desert – it used to receive a lot of rainfall
    • As rainfall increased, settlements increased
    • Gobero (9700 – 8300 ya / 7700 – 6300 BCE):
      • We actually have a fishing village during this wet phase
        • Bone harpoons, hooks
      • Abandoned as desert took back over
      • Reoccupied again 6kya with cattle added
      • Changing rainfall patterns
    • Pastoralism: herding domesticated animals to grazing and watering locations and subsisting off milk, blood, and meat when necessary
      • These guys follow their animals over long distances
    • Sedentism:
      • Villages similar to Natufian
        • 15 houses in two rows
        • Storage pits
        • Broad diet breadth
        • Grinding stones
      • But they already had pottery – in Africa it was right there from the beginning
    • Nabta Playa, Egypt (10800 – 6200 cal BP):
      • Controversial but important site
      • Argued for independent domestication of cattle at 11k cal BP
      • Early pottery of Khartoum style
      • Wells, status, megaliths
      • Early Neolithic (10800 – 8900 cal BP):
        • Lithic and bone scatters around hearths
        • Wild millet and legumes
        • Seasonal settlements when water present
        • Wells haven’t shown up yet
        • Early pastoral phase
      • El Adam type settlements (10,800 – 9800 cal BP):
        • Bladelet-assemblage
        • Endscrapers made on recycled MP tools!
        • Few grinding stones
        • Early Khartoum pottery
          • Status rather than functional given rarity
        • Possibly early domestic cattle
        • Mostly gazelle and hare, plus a few bones of jackal, turtle, small rodents, and birds
        • Interpreted as pastoralists visiting seasonal grazing grounds
          • Used for by-products rather than meat primarily
            • “Not widely accepted” that this was cattle
          • Recent mtDNA of the cattle: suggests separate African domestication (vs. Middle East)
        • Then arid period when the site was not occupied
        • Then: El Ghorab type settlements (9600 – 9200 cal BP):
          • After an arid hiatus
          • Reoccupied with toolkit of elongated scalene triangles, microburins, grinding stones
          • Few shards of pottery
          • Same cattle and desert adapted small fauna
            • Seasonal water settlements
          • Then aridity again!
        • Then: El Nabta type settlements (9100 – 8900 cal BP)
          • Large oval huts and smaller round huts
          • Bell-shaped storage pits
          • Deep wells (2.5 m), some with shallow basins beside for cattle
          • This allowed for year round occupations (except during summer floods)
          • Bone points, pottery
          • 20,000 wild seeds of grasses and legumes as well as tubers and fruits representing 80 different morphological types
          • Possibly domesticated sorghum
          • Wild or domestic, they were harvesting for long-term storage
        • The next phase: middle Neolithic (8300 – 7600 cal BP):
          • Gazelle declines (as in NE, but could be hunting or the aridity cycles)
            • Wider variety of animals took their place
          • Introduced domesticated goat or sheep from NE, becomes important meat food
          • Cattle bones still rare, suggesting by-products favored
            • No plant remains due to preservation but storage and grinding stones
          • Houses common in clusters of six plus
        • Site E-75-8, El Nabta:
          • No houses, but lots of stone lined hearths
          • After most sites with no cattle, this one lots of cattle bones
            • Maybe this was desperate times, and they needed to eat the cattle
            • Maybe this was a long term occupation and the cattle bones just accumulated over time
            • Maybe this was symbolic – maybe this place was a ceremonial centre when communities aggregated, where they ritualistic-ly slaughtered cattle and ate them (excavator interpretation)
          • Late Neolithic (7500 – 6200 cal BP):
            • Another period of aridity
            • Larger hearth only sites
            • Projectile points interpreted as weapons as defense
            • Site E-75-8 reoccupied and expanded
              • Same aggregation site occupied
              • Calendar circle and other megaliths added
              • Huge blocks make usually empty enclosures
                • Most burial spaces empty
              • Complete young adult cow buried in a claylined and roofed chamber below a mound
                • Six other mound also have buried cow remains
              • Carved stone slab buried 3.5m below surface
                • Shaped like a cow? A mushroom?
              • Nabta playa – summary:
                • Early occupations took cattle to the Nile valley during dry seasons, traded for pottery
                • Later innovated deep wells and didn’t need to go to Nile (and potentially have conflicts with the agriculturalists there)
                  • Seasonal population aggregation developed into calendar circle and cow burials
                • Uan Afuda, Libya ((9000-8000 ya):
                  • Excellent preservation, even longer occupation sequence
                  • “Middle Paleolithic – Aterian?” (Undated)
                    • Aeolian sands (wind-blown) are mixed with MSA lithics
                    • Mixing sands left no other evidence
                  • “Epipaleolithic” (9700-9200 BP):
                    • Microlithic tools
                    • Specialized hunting camp for Barabry sheep (100% of fauna found)
                      • Preservation excellent, only plants were for fire (evidence of absence)
                      • Small hut with multiple unstructured hearths
                    • “Mesolithic Pottery Bearing” (8765-8000 BP):
                      • “Fill” is mix of dung and plants
                      • Specialised fire areas, stone structures
                      • Intensive use of wild plants, grinding cereals
                      • Shift from “procurement” to “processing” of wild foods
                        • Basketry could suggest storage
                        • Painted eggshell
                        • Decorated ceramic
                        • Dung & grass in the back of the cave
                      • “Early Pastoral” (7700-6400 BP):
                        • Pick up the sequence at other sites
                        • Domesticated sheep introduced from Near East (Smith)
                        • Genetically unrelated to today’s African domesticated species
                        • Merimde beni-Salam, Egypt:
                          • Village with domestic cattle, sheep, and pigs all from Near East
                            • Simple graves: bead, an amulet, or a reed mat
                            • Rock paintings of people with cattle
                            • Proximity to early farming sites in the Nile flood zone suggests domestic animals brought in by farmers before being picked up by hunter-gatherers away from the Nile
                          • “Middle Pastoral” (6100-5000 BP):
                            • Alternately occupied lake zones and mountain regions
                            • Fishing around the lakes, mountains for grazing sheep and goats
                              • Exotic lithic materials from lake zones found in all sites
                              • Lake sites also had pits for large ceramic vessels, and hiding places for a few grinding-stones and hand querns
                            • “Late Pastoral” (5000-3500 BP):
                              • Rainfall reduced, lakes dried up
                                • You would think since water is essential for cattle, a reduction would reduce pastoralism
                                • But actually it did the opposite- it allowed the spread of pastoralism through Africa
                                  • Because before, the tsetse fly was a natural southern boundary (this fly bad for cattle)
                                  • But with reduced rainfall, reduced tsetse fly – cattle can now spread
                                • Helped spread cattle-based pastoralism because the tsetse fly now gone
                                • Focus also shifted towards Nile and other river valleys
                              • Summary of Neolithic Pastoral Africa
                                • Consumed wild grain and animals, fish at times
                                • Small villages formed around lakes
                                  • Grinding stones evidence of extensive grain processing
                                  • Pottery was first for status, then storage (more functional)
                                  • Hunting with pre-domestication control of wild animals (Sheep and possibly cattle)
                                  • Domesticated species introduced from Near East, easily adopted
                                  • Pastoralism widespread before large farming communities

• Often new technology is like that (like pottery): first for status, then when it becomes commonplace, it becomes more functional

Textbook, Chapter 9 (9.1)

• There is a lot of flexibility in the sequence of events leading to the shift from hunting and gathering to farming
• In Africa, pastoral societies based on domesticated animals developed without plant domestication
• The development of agriculture in Africa involved the indigenous domestication of plants and possibly animals, as well as the adoption of domesticated plants and animals from the ME
• The current arid environment of the Sahara developed only 4500 years ago
  • Between 14000 and 4500, there was more rainfall, and thus human occupation
• During the period of increased rainfall, small villages of HGs developed across Northern Africa
  • The sites resembled the Natufian societies of the ME (re their size, structures, exploitation of wide range of resources, and use of grinding stones), except they had pottery (which only developed in the ME in the Late Neolithic), and storage pits
    • g. of this = Nabta Playa, site E-75-6, 9000 years ago
  • Uan Afudaà pre-agricultural societies of the Sahara, between 9000-8000 years ago
    • One finding was wild sheep in a pen – so although no domestication, they were employing some form of animal management by capturing animals and keeping them in a pen
  • Gobero, a fishing village, 9700-8200
    • The site was abandoned due to aridity 8000 years ago
  • The earliest evidence of domestication of animals in the Central Sahara = 7000 years ago
    • No evidence of domesticated plants
  • First farming villages:
    • First domesticated plants in Egypt = 7000 years ago
    • Idea = HGs domesticated plants as a “backup”, and then it took off
    • In Western Africa, the earliest plant domestication = 3500 years ago
  • In Africa, as in the ME, small villages predate the domestication of plants and animals