Quel Néolithique dans la Corne de l’Afrique ?

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the principal results of a research program set up in the Horn of Africa during the last twelve years. The aim of this program is the study of the Neolithic process with an emphasis on fieldwork documentation that has been inadequate and unreliable to date. The Horn of Africa is characterized by a great diversity of ecosystems. Excavations undertaken during the recent years give the opportunity to describe different forms of adaptation during the Early and Middle Holocene, which appear to be largely dependent on environmental conditions. The first evidence of breeding that has just been reported in Djibouti dates to the second half of the Third Millennium BC. It appears to be the first secure evidence of a productive economy. However, if we assume that plant collection and consumption have also played a major role, food resources of human groups who practiced early cattle and goat breeding, remained mainly based on fishing and hunting. However except for grinding tools, no plant remains can confirm this. The adoption of pottery during the third millennium BC in the Gobaad Basin could match with the development of storage and transformation of fishing/gathering material. The large chronological gap between the first evidence of animal domestication in the Nile Valley or in the Sudan plains, compared with the Horn of Africa, is probably related to several factors, including the difficulties of circulation in the Ethiopian relief, the existence of parasitic diseases of cattle and a strong cultural inertia. This is particularly visible in the mountains of South-Western Ethiopia where excavations of Moche Borago cave and some other recent studies have highlighted the very late onset of breeding and also probably of agriculture.