Holocene resource exploitation along the Nile:diet and subsistence strategies of Mesolithic and Neolithic societies at Khor Shambat 1, Sudan

The subsistence practices of Holocene communities living in the Nile Valley of Central Sudan are comparatively little known. Recent excavations at Khor Shambat, Sudan, have yielded well-defined Mesolithic and Neolithic stratigraphy. Here, for the first time, archaeozoological, palaeobotanical, phytolith and dental calculus studies are combined with lipid residue analysis of around 100 pottery fragments and comparative analysis of faunal remains and organic residues. This holistic approach provides valuable information on changes in adaptation strategies, from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to Neolithic herders exploiting domesticates. A unique picture is revealed of the natural environment and human subsistence, demonstrating the potential wider value of combining multiple methods

What forced the prehistoric cattle-keepers to emigrate from the Red Sea Mountains?

To day’s desert area of Red Sea Hills is now in hab ited by a Beja-Bisharin tribe, the camel breed ers. In pre his toric times, this area was in hab ited or pen e trated by pas to ral com mu ni ties en gaged in cat tle breed ing. Their oc cu pa tion is pri mar ily marked by thou sands of en grav ings with rep re sen ta tions of long-horned cat tle, which were dis cov ered in a rock art gal lery in Bir Nurayet, one of the larg est rock art gal ler ies in Af rica and the whole world. We still do not know when the shep herds and their herds aban doned the area. This is sue can be ad dressed by geoarchaeology and in ves ti ga - tion of sed i ments dis cov ered in Wadi Diib, i.e. silts. As we be lieve, they re cord cli mate and en vi ron men tal changes tak ing place in re cent mil len nia, which prob a bly to a large ex tent de ter mined the socio-cul tural pro cesses in the area

Post-Meroitic cemetery at the Khor Shambat site in Sudan

Archaeological research at the Khor Shambat site located in Omdurman in central Sudan has been conducted since 2012, when a team of scientists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences (Poznań) launched a salvage exploration of a Neolithic site and cemetery damaged by road construction. Research is now conducted within the scope of a grant from the National Science Centre, Poland (No. 2015/17/D/HS3/01492). Three seasons of fieldwork since 2016 have focused on the extensive prehistoric settlement spanning nearly 4000 years, from the early Mesolithic to the late Neolithic. The site turned out to be attractive not only for Mesolithic hunters-gatherers and Neolithic shepherds, but also as a burial place for the Meroitic and post-Meroitic inhabitants of the region. A survey of about 1% of the surface of the Khor Shambat site (KSH 1) resulted in the discovery of 66 graves; 12 of these are probably post-Meroitic, and of these three presented a rich and interesting array of burial goods, including imports from the Far East. At the same time, KSH 1 is one of the southernmost post-Meroitic cemeteries