Here comes the rain again… The early Holocene El Adam occupation of the Western Desert, Nabta Playa, Egypt: Site E-08-2

Abstract

Further Neolithic encampments and settlements have been explored by the Combined Prehistoric Expedition in the Nabta Playa Basin on the southern border of Egypt's Western Desert around 100 km west of the Nile Valley. Site E-08-2 in Nabta Playa, excavated in 2008–2009, provided considerable new information on the El Adam settlement, which functioned in the younger phase of the El Adam horizon, sometime between 9000 and 8800 BP (c. 8200-8000 cal. BC). This new evidence facilitates the understanding of the direction of the site's development and shows how the discovery of new sources of raw material that are situated several dozen kilometres to the north affected flint working there.