The introduction of Neolithic resources to North Africa: A discussion in light of the Holocene research between Egypt and Libya

Abstract

The dynamics affecting coastal areas of North Africa, especially the rise of Neolithic economies, remained largely unexplored until a few years ago. There are no definitive answers for questions about how groups belonging to a very well-documented late Palaeolithic tradition developed locally, and if and how these changes resulted from outside influences that may have affected the region during the middle and late Holocene. This is especially true of the provenance and success of the main domesticates, in other words the plant (wheat, barley, pulses) and animal species (sheep/goat, cattle, pigs) which constitute the North African Neolithic complex. The obvious intrusion of the domesticates from outside has prompted various authors to seek their exotic locations, but reasons and circumstances that led to the displacement of groups were rarely discussed in trying to reconstruct modalities and routes of diffusion. To understand and study these problems, a trans-regional perspective including North Africa and the Levant seems necessary, but is very rarely adopted. This paper tries to answer these questions, starting from the data on the central-eastern portion of Mediterranean North Africa–Egypt and Libya – which are closer to the Levantine territories. In particular, it focuses on what has recently emerged from important investigations in Egypt (Western Desert) and northwest Libya (Jebel Gharbi and Jefara plain). Through a comparative approach combining chronology, the characteristics of plant and animal resources used, and technology, both of these areas may help to understand the ways and paths followed in the introduction and propagation of food production towards northeastern Africa. In an attempt to trace the routes followed in the transfer from the Levantine towards the western regions, the paper deals also with the main theoretical and problematic issues related to the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East. It shows that, contrary to past claims, the domestication of plants and animals does not seem to have taken a short time and that instead a protracted process of domestication seems to be the more realistic model. Therefore, the search for a core area where everything must have begun seems really complicated. Finally it reconsiders some specific comparisons between Levant and North Africa, chronologically and geographically plausible, that have been suggested for some time. They concern the material culture repertoires, within which the importance of the main component, lithic production, is obvious.