The Middle Stone Age in the Eastern Desert. EDAR 135 — a buried early MIS 5 horizon from Sudan

ABSTRACT

Middle Stone Age (MSA) lithic artefacts coming from dated layers preserved in their original stratigraphic position are still rare in Northeast Africa in general and in Sudan in particular. This paper aims to present the results of technological and functional analyses of an assemblage coming from a stratigraphic context, i.e. the upper level of the EDAR (Eastern Desert – Atbara River) 135 site, discovered in an abandoned gold mining pit in the Sudanese Eastern Desert, approximately 70 km east of the town of Atbara. The assemblage, which is based on locally available quartz and rhyolite, comes from a layer bracketed by OSL dates of 116 ± 13 and 125 ± 11 kya. Such dating places it within Marine Isotope Stage 5e–5d. Analysis of the assemblage revealed several characteristics that seem to set it apart from other MSA Northeast African inventories. Among these, the dominance of simple, non-predetermined core reduction strategies and expedient tool types, coupled with the lack of traces of Nubian Levallois technique, are the most conspicuous. Micro-traces of use on animal and plant matter were preserved on some of the tools. EDAR 135 is part of a newly discovered complex of sites that confirms the presence of Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins along one of the possible routes out of Africa towards Eurasia.

RÉSUMÉ

La découverte d’outils lithiques ‘Middle-Stone Age’ (MSA) provenant de niveaux archéologiques datés et dans leur contexte sédimentologique d’origine est encore rare en Afrique du Nord-Est, et plus particulièrement au Soudan. Cet article présente les résultats d’analyses fonctionnelles et technologiques d’un assemblage lithique en stratigraphie, c’est-à-dire provenant du niveau supérieur du site EDAR 135 (Eastern Desert — Atbara River), découvert dans un puits de mine d’or abandonné dans le désert oriental soudanais à environ 70 km à l’est de la ville d’Atbara. L’assemblage, confectionné à partir de sources locales de quartz et de rhyolite, provient d’un niveau encadré par des datations OSL entre 116 ± 13 et 125 ± 11 ka. Ces dates placent cette occupation dans les stades isotopiques de l’oxygène 5e-d (MIS 5e-5d). Les analyses révèlent plusieurs caractéristiques qui semblent différencier cet assemblage d’autres inventaires lithiques du MSA provenant d’Afrique du Nord-Est. Notamment, l’assemblage est dominé par les outils opportunistes et par l’utilisation de stratégies simples, non-prédéterminées, de réduction des nucléus; on observe aussi l’absence de traces de la technique du Levallois nubien. Certains outils présentent des micro-traces d’utilisation relatives au travail de matières animales et végétales. Le site EDAR135 fait partie d’un groupe de sites récemment découverts qui confirment la présence d’hominiens du Pléistocène moyen et tardif le long d’une des voies possibles menant hors d’Afrique vers l’Eurasie.

KEYWORDS:

• Sudan
• Middle Stone Age
• lithic technology
• use-wear
• quartz
• OSL

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, under Grant no. NCN2015/19/B/HS3/03562 and the Excellence Initiative — Research University (IDUB) programme of the University of Wrocław. The project was based at the University of Wrocław and supported by the Korean Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (GP2017-013), Gyeonsang National University and Al Neelain University, Khartoum, Sudan. Researchers and students from these organisations were of course not the only people participating in the fieldwork. It would not be possible to have carried out the project without the permission of the National Corporation for Antiques and the Museum in Khartoum and the dedicated work of our many Sudanese friends and colleagues.

Notes

1 The three published EDAR OSL dates, corresponding to the first, second and fourth samples from the top in Figure 3a (Masojć et al. 2019: Figure 4, Table 1) have recently been recalculated following a standardised methodology at Royal Holloway, University of London as being younger than previously thought.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maciej Ehlert

Maciej Ehlert is the chairman of the Archeolodzy.org Foundation. He obtained his PhD at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław, Poland. Lithic technologies, especially in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Europe and the Middle Stone Age of Northeast Africa, are his main field of expertise. He participated in the fieldwork and lithic analyses of the EDAR project.

Ju Yong Kim

Ju Yong Kim is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Korean Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resource (KIGAM) and holds a PhD from Seoul National University (SNU). He carried out geoarchaeological investigations for the EDAR project as a principal research fellow of KIGAM, Korea.

Young Kwan Sohn

Young Kwan Sohn is Professor in Sedimentology at the College of Natural Sciences, Gyeongsang National University (GNU), Jinju City, Korea and a member of the EDAR geoarchaeological team.

Marzena Cendrowska

Marzena Cendrowska obtained her PhD at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław, Poland, and is a post-doctoral research associate at The Zinman Institute of Archaeology in Haifa, Israel. She specialises in microscopic use-wear analyses of stone artefacts, with an emphasis on those made of quartz. She analysed tool samples from all the excavated EDAR sites.

Joanna Krupa-Kurzynowska

Joanna Krupa-Kurzynowska is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland. She is a geomorphologist and her work on the EDAR project was focused on issues related to the site’s palaeoenvironment.

Eric Andrieux

Eric Andrieux is a post-doctoral research associate in luminescence dating at Royal Holloway University of London and Durham University, United Kingdom. He conducted the luminescence dating data analyses and calculations and participated in writing the manuscript.

Simon J. Armitage

Simon Armitage is Professor in Quaternary Science at Royal Holloway University of London (United Kingdom), and a PI of the Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE) at the University of Bergen (Norway). He uses luminescence dating to better understand the relationship between climate change and early human behaviour, particularly in dryland environments. He supervised the luminescence data analyses for the EDAR project.

Grzegorz Michalec

Grzegorz Michalec is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław, Poland. His research focuses on lithic technologies, both those of the Upper Palaeolithic in central Europe and those of the Acheulean and Middle Stone Age in Northeast Africa. He participated in the fieldwork and conducted the lithic analyses of the EDAR assemblages.

Ewa Dreczko

Ewa Dreczko obtained her PhD at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław, Poland, and a member of the EDAR team. GIS analyses, particularly in Stone Age contexts, are among her research interests.

Hassan Mustafa Alkhidir

Hassan Mustafa Alkhidir is a faculty member at the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Tourism and Archaeology, Shendi University, Sudan, and a PhD student at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany. He was an active participant in the EDAR project’s fieldwork campaigns.

Marcin Szmit

Marcin Szmit is the head of the Digitalisation and Archiving Department of Gdańsk Archaeological Museum, Poland. He has 20 years of experience in archaeological fieldwork in Sudan. In the EDAR project, he was responsible for surveying and the use of GIS tools.

Mirosław Masojć

Mirosław Masojć is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław, Poland. His principal research interests lie in studying Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter-gatherers in Europe and Northeast Africa and flint knapping in the Late Bronze Age. He was the PI of the EDAR project.