ABSTRACT
The Fayum has been known as the oldest center of cereal cultivation in prehistoric Egypt. How Egypt’s earliest Neolithic farmers lived a life is still a subject of controversy. This article focuses on Neolithic stone axes from Kom W, the type site of the Fayum Neolithic. These axes were collected and insufficiently published by the British archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson in the early twentieth century, and are presently stored in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. A new study elucidates how these axes were made, used, repaired and recycled. These axes suggest that there was woody vegetation around Kom W and the inhabitants of this site needed to fell trees and work wood.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank all the staff of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London for accommodating the author’s research on Gertrude Caton-Thompson’s Fayum lithic collection, and Pierre Vermeersch and anonymous reviewers for commenting on an earlier version of this article.
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Noriyuki Shirai
Noriyuki Shirai studied archaeology at Waseda University in Japan. He moved to Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he obtained a PhD degree after years of research in the Fayum in Egypt. Then he moved to University College London in the UK for research on Gertrude Caton-Thompson’s Fayum lithic collection in museums. He is interested in the Neolithization of Egypt.