Prehistory and Environment in the Libyan Desert

Abstract

The Aswan High Dam on the Nile in southern Egypt has already begun to fill its huge reservoir. The resulting Lake Nasser will be over 300 miles in length and up to 40 miles in width. The threat to prehistoric and historic archaeological remains posed by the construction of this dam has been well publicized. Through the encouragement of U.N.E.S.C.O., and the financial support of a number of governments and private granting agencies, more than thirty expeditions have studied these remains. Efforts to record, and in some cases to salvage, dynastic temples have received great popular attention. A smaller portion of the total research effort was devoted to prehistory, that is, those time periods before the appearance of settled foodproducing villages that were headed at first by local chiefs and later united under pharaonic rule. Since the majority of expeditions working in prehistory seldom ventured more than a few miles from pool area proper, the Combined Prehistoric Expedition of Southern Methodist University devoted a part of its resources to a study of the adjoining Libyan Desert west of the Nile. Although it has long been known that a variety of prehistoric cultures existed in the Libyan Desert, the cultural interrelationships between the desert and the Nile, in prehistoric times, were poorly understood. An important question was whether, throughout prehistory, the deserts should be considered as culturally marginal or peripheral to an