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Abstract

Post-Pleistocene climatic improvement in the Northern Hemisphere after ca. 9550 BC allowed human populations to recolonize large parts of North Africa in what is today the Sahara Desert. In the Egyptian Western Desert, the beginnings of human occupation date as early as ca. 9300 BC. Occupation continued until the middle of the third millennium BC when final desertification of the area no longer afforded human occupation. The settlement of the Neolithic cattle and sheep/goat herders developed along with the rhythm of alternating wet and dry climatic oscillations. One of the areas occupied intensively during the early and middle Holocene was Gebel Ramlah. Pastoral populations established their settlements around the shores of a paleo-lake adjacent to a rocky massif, to exploit the local savannah environment. During most of the Neolithic, they buried their dead dispersed outside of their settlements. Only during the Final Neolithic (after ca. 4600 BC) did they place them exclusively in cemeteries. Of six Final Neolithic cemeteries investigated at Gebel Ramlah to date, one is entirely unprecedented, not only in North Africa but also globally at such an early date. For just under 200 years (ca. 4500–4300 BC), it served exclusively for the inhumation of infants who died around (perinate) or shortly after the time of birth (neonate). Thirty-two

burial pits contained skeletal remains of 39 individuals, not only infants but also at least two adult females accompanied by perinates/neonates. Older children (> 3 years) were interred at a nearby cemetery that primarily comprised adults.

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The area around Gebel Ramlah was settled since the beginning of the Early Neolithic, and the density of settlement reached its maximum during the El Jerar phase (climatic optimum of the Holocene). Traces from the Middle, Late, and Final Neolithic are less intensive and random. In fact, for the Final Neolithic, we have more information on mortuary behavior than for the settlement pattern and subsistence. Between 4500 and 4300 BC, south-western fringes of the Gebel Ramlah lake served as an extended burial ground for different populations. Different ancestry and relationships of these populations can be followed on the basis of archaeological and, partially, bioarchaeological arguments. Some groups (using cemeteries E-01-2, E-03-1, E-03-2, and E-09-4) show some affiliation with sub-Saharan Africans, readable in the pottery assemblage and other grave goods, as well as some morphological features (Irish 2010; Kobusiewicz and Kabaciński 2010; Czekaj-Zastawny and Kabaciński 2015). These people were certainly mobile, perhaps spending only a few months per year at Gebel Ramlah. The E-09-02 cemeteries for neonates and adults belonged to another, more sedentary group with limited mobility; however, we cannot trace their origins based on the available record. An almost complete lack of grave goods does not allow comparative analyses. On the other hand, peculiar characters of the skeletal remains at these cemeteries—numerous neonatal/perinatal individuals and poorly preserved subadults/adults—do not allow reliable studies based on craniometric or dental data. But, qualitatively, there are no obvious differences among all populations from Gebel Ramlah at the beginning of the Final Neolithic. Thus, the two groups, culturally different, were likely not much different biologically, possibly deriving from the same region of Africa.

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Ethnographic data offer support by showing how radically different children are treated in various African societies (Gottlieb 2004a, b; Pawlik 2004; Kabaciński et al. 2018).

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