Water supply of ancient Egyptian settlements: the role of the state. Overview of a relatively equitable scheme from the Old to New Kingdom (ca. 2543-1077 BC).

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12685-015-0150-xThe study of the textual and archaeological evidence shows that the water supply of the settlements of ancient Egypt seems to have worked on a simple and a relatively equitable scheme, at least from the Old Kingdom until the New Kingdom (ca. 2543-1077). The water supply of the inhabitants was completely managed by the state, through the local administration which was charged to bring the water, in general from a rural area, into towns and cities and to redistribute it to the inhabitants. The method of supply is illustrated by several sources of evidence, in particular by the well known case of the "water-carriers" of the village of Deir el-Medina. Thus, drawing together text and archaeology, this paper will demonstrate that over an extended period, even when the city was far from a water source, the state did not set up complex installations such as pipe networks or wells to bring water, but preferred a simpler system using the manpower available

Timing and pace of dairying inception and animal husbandry practices across Holocene North Africa

The timing and extent of the adoption and exploitation of domesticates and their secondary products, across Holocene North Africa, has long been the subject of debate. The three distinct areas within the region, Mediterranean north Africa, the Nile Valley and the Sahara, each with extremely diverse environments and ecologies, demonstrate differing trajectories to pastoralism. Here, we address this question using a combination of faunal evidence and organic residue analyses of c. 300 archaeological vessels from sites in Algeria, Libya and Sudan. This synthesis of new and published data provides a broad regional and chronological perspective on the scale and intensity of domestic animal exploitation and the inception of dairying practices in Holocene North Africa. Following the introduction of domesticated animals into the region our results confirm a hiatus of around one thousand years before the adoption of a full pastoral economy, which appears first in the Libyan Sahara, at c. 5200 BCE, subsequently appearing at c. 4600 BCE in the Nile Valley and at 4400–3900 BCE in Mediterranean north Africa

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