LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOlOGY. EGYPT AND THE ... - CFEETK - CNRS

Programme and abstracts volume
MUTRI Giuseppina 1 , HAMDAN Mohamed 2
Lithic raw material in the Farafra Oasis (Egypt): location, procurement
and use from the Middle Stone Age until the Neolithic period
1 Sapienza, Università di Roma, Dipartimento di scienze storiche, archeologiche e antropologiche dell’antichità,
via Palestro, 63, 00185, Roma, Italy
2 University of Cairo, Department of Geology, Giza, Cairo, Egypt
Presenting author: Giuseppina Mutri
E-mail: mutripg@tiscali.it
Tel: +39 3407782727
During the last fieldwork, on December 2009, the italian mission at the Oasis of Farafra
(Egypt), directed by Barbara Barich (Sapienza, University of Rome) started a new research
project. The aim of the project is the identification and description of lithic outcrops of raw
materials used by people from the Pleistocene until the Early and Middle Holocene. The first
phase of this research interested the areas of Hidden Valley-Plateau and Sheikh el Obeiyid. A
series of surveys were carried out, in order to identify the raw material outcrops and different
lithic samples were collected. These samples will be subjected to detailed petrographic
analysis at the Cairo University, but macroscopic analysis allowed a preliminary classification
of the raw materials. A special attention was paid on the presence of clear evidence of
exploitation of the outcrops by human groups, such as the workshop for the production of
lithic artefacts. These findings have emerged in most cases, such as in the case of a silcrete
outcrop on the Hidden Valley Plateau. The techno-typological features of the lithic artefacts
found in this site indicate an exploitation of the quarry around 100.000 BP this year, in an
advanced phase of the local Middle Stone Age (M.S.A.). The presence of artefacts near the
outcrops is the clearest indicator of an effective exploitation of the source and therefore
represents an important economic factor in the analysis of raw materials and resource
exploitation by human groups in different periods.
Until now various formations of chert have been identified (silcrete, chalcedony, silicified
mudstone, alveoline) all related to the karstic nature of the Farafra region. The preliminary
analysis allowed us to underlines that:
- Middle Stone Age artefacts are formed mainly from quartzite and siliceous sandstone. These
rocks occur as channel fill sediments of the Tarawan chalk. They are recorded in two
localities: the sandstone of the first one seems very suitable for grinding stones. Some of these
artefacts are also formed form flint.
- Neolithic artefacts are formed from three different sources, these are:
a- chert, which is available as nodules and bands in the Eocene Farafra limestone exposed
at the topmost part of the plateau also probably as boulders and gravel in the bottom of the
basin.
b - Silcrete is a silicone oxide occuring as a dark brown crust that covers horizontal plains
located to the north of Sheik El Obeiyid Village.
- Silicified mudstone, developing as thin beds, up to 5 m thick, included in Ain Dalla
Formation.
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