Handbook of Ancient Nubia

Dietrich Raue

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9783110420654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

Numerous research projects have studied the Nubian cultures of Sudan and Egypt over the last thirty years, leading to significant new insights. The contributions to this handbook illuminate our current understanding of the cultural history of this fascinating region, including its interconnections to the natural world.

II From Palaelithicum to 2nd Millennium BC

Donatella Usai

The Palaeolithic / Stone Age

Introduction

The role of Africa in the history of human evolution is well known. The first and most ancient evidence witnessing the long evolutionary process that brought about the modern humans is linked to this continent, as witnessed by the richness of archaeological evidence of regions like Ethiopia and South Africa (Grine 2016; Osbjorn 2013). Within this history, whose outline is not yet well defined, the Nile Valley represents one of two possible paths followed by Homo sapiens in his explorations at a time when conditions in Eastern Africa became dryer and those of North Africa and Near East possibly became more attractive (Castañeda et al. 2009). Within the ‘Out of Africa’ models (Bräuer 1984; Stringer/Andrews 1988), that concentrating upon the Nile Valley represents an alternative to the model based upon the crossing of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, in the Red Sea, that could have taken place when the sea level was at its minimum, between 118 and 135 m under the modern level, during the Last Glacial period. This last model has been recently tested on the basis of anthropological and archaeological evidence. 114

In the southern part of Sudan, along the Blue Nile, the remains of the Singa man (Woodward 1938) were found at the beginning of the past century and have a minimum estimated age of > 133 ± 2 Ka; 115 they are the most ancient known in the Nile Valley and the only remains discovered in the Nubian and Sudanese Nile Valley; they are considered to have belonged to ancestors of the earliest modern humans.

The areas with more evidence relating to the Palaeolithic/Early, Middle and Late Stone Age correspond roughly to those where ‘implementation’ events of great magnitude, like the construction of the Aswan Dam or, more recently, that of the Merowe Dam in the Fourth Cataract, provided a strong impulse for archaeological research on this subject (Fig. 1).

The cultural and chronological framework of the Palaeolithic Period in the Nile Valley in Sudan, in Sudanese and Egyptian Nubia, has been fundamentally built upon the work put forward during the Nubian Campaign for salvaging the Nubian monuments and cultural heritage of the area (Irwin et al. 1968; Wendorf 1968). This work correlated with the first in-depth study of Nile sediments (Butzer/Hansen 1968). While corrections to this chronological framework have been necessary (Van Peer 1991; Vermeersch 1992), the ‘cultural’ sequence has not been revisited much. The number of Palaeolithic sites discovered after the Nubian Campaign is rather limited and not even recent research done in the Fourth Cataract has revised this picture (Usai, pers. obs.).

The Early Palaeolithic / Early Stone Age

The most ancient lithic production sites in Nubia and Sudan can be attributed to the Late Acheulean. Sites that have produced bifacial hand-axes, made of ferruginous sandstone or quartzite, are numerous and often located close to ancient terraces or on top or on the slopes of jebels.

The rough evolution of the Nile and of the surrounding environment, through the various climatic transitions and because of strong erosion, have quite often reduced the Palaeolithic sites to mere surface concentrations where only stone artefacts are preserved. For this reason it is quite difficult to assess the chronological position of these artefacts and to reconstruct other aspects of the life of ancient human beings, e.g., settlement and subsistence systems, or to trace symbolic behaviour that could be linked to his evolution into a modern phase. 116

A lithic assemblage including Acheulean hand-axes was found at Abu Hugar, a site located 15 km to the south of the place where the Singa skull was recovered (Lacaille 1951). The association between human remains and artefacts is not straightforward as it is based on the equivalence between deposits where they were found. The site of Abu Hugar produced relevant faunal remains, an assemblage ascribable to the Late Pleistocene and which includes species now extinct (Bate 1951).

Acheulean hand-axes (Fig. 2) were also documented by A. J. Arkell at Khor Abu Anga (Arkell 1949; Carlson 2015), at Arkin 8 (Chmielewski 1968) and Site 400 in the Second Cataract (Guichard/Guichard 1968). Recently a sequence embracing the Early to Middle Palaeolithic/Early to Middle Stone Age located in the Middle Atbara Valley has been described by Abbate et al. (2010).

A particular position of importance is held by site 8-B-11 on Saï Island, in Sudanese Nubia, as it witnesses the transition from the Early to the Middle Stone Age, from Acheulean to Sangoan, within a stratified and well-preserved deposit (Van Peer et al. 2003; 2004). The exploitation and processing of pigment minerals recorded in this context have been considered a sign of modern human behaviour (Van Peer et al. 2004); the ochre pigment may have been extracted using the Sangoan core-axes (Fig. 3), tools carefully worked bifacially only at the working edge and preserving thick and untrimmed butts (Clark 1965). The Sangoan industry of Saï Island is attributed to the Middle Stone Age, and is succeeded by the Lupemban, which is characterised by symmetrical lanceolate foliate tools and blades from volumetric cores, and includes rare elements of Levallois technology of the Nubian Complex; some OSL dating puts the earliest phase at the site at c. 200 Ka (Van Peer et al. 2003; 2004). Elements of the Sangoan were previously recognised by Arkell (1949), as present also in the assemblage of Khor Abu Anga, and have been found recently at a site located at Al-Jamrab, west of the White Nile (Zerboni et al. 2016).

The Middle Palaeolithic / Middle Stone Age

The most credited chronological subdivision for the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age of the Nile Valley nowadays is that suggested by Van Peer (1991). Accordingly, the MP/MSA can be divided into three periods: an Early Middle Palaeolithic/Nubian Middle Stone Age, a Middle Middle Palaeolithic (Nubian Mousterian and Denticulate Mousterian), and a Late Middle Palaeolithic (Khormusan).

The Levalloi technology, present in the Sangoan of site 8-B-11 and more in the upper deposits documented here, is the element characterising the MP/MSA. This is a complex reduction system aiming at predetermining the shape of flakes. In the Nile Valley it takes distinctive characteristics such to make it to be distinguished as Nubian Levallois. Among Nubian Levallois cores two types have been distinguished, 117 Type 1 and Type 2 (Van Peer 1992, fig. 3, 2). Nubian Levallois cores have a triangular or cordiform shape, prepared main striking platform, a median distal ridge obtained through distal-divergent lamellar detachment (Type 1; Fig. 4a) or bilateral convergent detachments (Type 2; Fig. 4b); additional sub-types have also been described (Usik et al. 2012). Together with Nubian Levallois cores, classical ones with centripetal reduction (K-Group; Fig. 4c) also occur (Van Peer 1992). The spreading of the Nubian Levallois in areas other than the Nile Valley, in Yemen and in Oman 118 is considered an indication of modern human dispersal out of North Africa.

In the lithic industries of the MP/MSA – whether they exhibit the Classic or the Nubian Levallois technology, together with the by-products, scrapers, denticulates, notches, sometimes Tayac points and rare truncations, can be found.

Sites of this epoch have been located in the Second Cataract region (Guichard/Guichard 1968; Marks 1968a) and more recently in the Fourth Cataract 119 and in the Bayuda (Masojć 2010).

Most of the sites of this period in the Second Cataract, because of their proximity to raw material sources and their composition – abundance of debris, cores, debitage and few tools – seem to represent mainly workshop areas. Only the lithic industry of Site 440 (Shiner 1968), the only one within a stratified context, was associated to a faunal assemblage: that of the lower level has been related to butchering and that of the upper to fishing activities (Wendorf et al. 1992).

Sites with Levallois technology, Nubian or Classical types, are known in Central Sudan only from sporadic findings (Usai/Salvatori 2007). Only superficially studied and partially published are evidence of this period from the Southern Dongola Reach (Shiner 1971).

The Khormusan, an industry whose type site, Site 1017 on the bank of the Khor Musa, was found in the Second Cataract, is attributed to the final phase of the Middle Palaeolithic/Mi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• I General
• II From Palaelithicum to 2nd Millennium BC
• III 1st Millennium BC–2nd Millennium AD
• IV Surveys and Fringes
• Indices (by Josephine Hensel)