Abstract
Abstract The article presents important results from the Middle Draa Project (MDP) in southern Morocco related to two mid-1st millennium CE hilltop settlements (hillforts) that were associated with significant rock art assemblages. The combination of detailed survey and radiocarbon dating of these remarkable sites provides a unique window on the Saharan world in which the pecked engravings, predominantly of horses, were produced. As the horse imagery featured on the walls of buildings within the settlement, the radiocarbon dating around the mid-1st millennium CE can also be applied in this instance to the rock art. The rarity of rock art of this period within habitation sites is also discussed and it is argued that its occurrence at both these locations indicates that they had some special social or sacred significance for their occupants. While it is commonplace for rock art of this era, featuring horses and camels, to be attributed by modern scholars to mobile pastoralists, a further argument of the paper is that the desert societies were in a period of transformation at this time, with the development of oases. The association of the rock art imagery with sedentary settlements, where grain was certainly being processed and stored, is thus an additional new element of contextual information for the widespread Saharan images of horses and horse and riders.
Highlights
Rock art dating to the North African Iron Age (NAIA, broadly 1000 BCE to 800 CE) is common in the Sahara (Fig. 1), with a predominant focus on horsemen, horses and – despite their manifest unsuitability for much of the terrain in which the images are found – chariots (Anderson 2016; Camps and Gast 1982; Gauthier and Gauthier 2011, 2015, 2018; Lhote 1982; Muzzolini 1990)
The North African Iron Age (NAIA) is a term that we use to define the autochthonous peoples and cultures of Maghrib and Sahara in the 1st millennium BCE, and extending in the desert regions beyond the Roman provincial territories until the coming of Islam in the 7th– 8th centuries CE
NAIA rock art connected to settlement sites other than rock shelters is rare in the Sahara and only a few examples are known (Fig. 1 for locations discussed below)
Summary
Rock art dating to the North African Iron Age (NAIA, broadly 1000 BCE to 800 CE) is common in the Sahara (Fig. 1), with a predominant focus on horsemen, horses and – despite their manifest unsuitability for much of the terrain in which the images are found – chariots (Anderson 2016; Camps and Gast 1982; Gauthier and Gauthier 2011, 2015, 2018; Lhote 1982; Muzzolini 1990). Of note in this area is a large NAIA hillfort (TIN017) that has been identified from satellite imagery and which lies on a peak between the mouths of two wadis In addition to these sites in the Tinzouline area, there have been some recent discoveries of multi-phase rock art (both engraved and painted) from a series of rock shelters in the Jebel Bani area (Ifran-n-Taska) and close to the pass of Foum Laachar just west of the southern part of the Middle Draa (Moumane et al 2019; Skounti et al 2012; Zampetti et al 2013). As with TIN001, the rock art stations do not appear to extend more than c. 2 km from the narrow point where the wadi breaks through the hill front, there is an extensive Medieval settlement (TIN004/TIN033) located c.1 km further south-west from the last station and an early modern granary a further 2 km along
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