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KUSH: Ancient Sudan including Egypt's Nubian and sandstone regions
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by alTakruri: [QB] [b]Khartoum "Mesolithic"[/b] copyright of Andrea Byrnes andie@easynet.co.uk 2003 Where the Blue and White Niles meet a vast settlement area from the 7th millennium BC onwards was identified and excavated by Arkell in the 1940s. Arkell named it “The Early Khartoum.” The site sat in a layer which was 2Ms deep at its thickest and was filled with quartz flakes and brown incised pottery, grind stones and fragments of shell. No earlier Pleistocene sites have been found which might have evolved into the Khartoum Mesolithic and at the moment its origins are a mystery. The inhabitants of Khartoum Mesolithic settlements were describes as hunter-fisher-potters. There is no sign of the domestication of plants or animals but the economy and technology had moved on from the Palaeolithic, so for convenience it has been designated Mesolithic. However, it should be clear that this should not be confused with the European Mesolithic and its cultural, technological and economic affiliations. It should be considered instead as a phase that sits between Egyptian/Sudanese Palaeolithic and Neolithic phases [i]“In the game of definitions, the presence of pottery – especially in the African context – hardly ties in with the conventional idea of the Mesolithic . . . . For convenience, however, we retain . . . the term ‘Khartoum Mesolithic’ simply because it is now enshrined in the literature (while acknowledging, nevertheless, its trued Neolithicizing nature)”[/i] (Midant-Reynes 1992/2000, p.93). Sites belonging typologically to the Khartoum Mesolithic (Arkell’s Early Khartoum) include Sorurab 1 and 2, Shabana, Shaqadud, Siggai, Abu Darbain and Anebis. Dates from these sites range between 9370+/-110 BP and 6408+/-80 BP. The environment, on the basis of the fauna, including porcupines, warthogs and buffaloes, was a humid savannah landscape. Tools were made of stone and bone. Lithics, made from local chert and quartz and distantly-located rhyolite (whose nearest sources was 80 km away) include quartz microlithic flakes, stone rings (with an average 10cm diameter) and pestles and mortars. Bone tools include barbed harpoons. Pottery was of two types, the first consisting of large bowls made from brown fabric which was well-fired and was decorated with wavy lines, the second decorated with dotted way lines. They were only polished on the interior. Burials were deposited in a contracted position and were accompanied with body jewellery made from ostrich shells. The settlement must have been inhabited on a seasonal basis, as it was located below the level of the annual inundation. Seventeen graves were found within the settlement. The economy was based on river animals (including crocodiles, turtles and hippos) with a high preponderance of fish. [i]“The Khartoum Mesolithic evolved at a time when the Sahara was enjoying favourable climatic conditions in lacustrine environments; the representation of the harpoon is indicative of an economy based on fishing (along with hunting and gathering)”[/i] (Midant-Reynes 1992/2000 p.98). It is possible that there was more opportunity to live a semi sedentary lifestyle under the conditions that existed at this time: [i]“The best evidence of increased sedentariness in Holocene times in the Nile Valley is the presumably pre-agricultural ‘Khartoum Mesolithic’ culture, whose type-site appears to have been inhabited, at least seasonally, for considerable periods of time”[/i] (Trigger 1983, p.16). [/QB][/QUOTE]
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