Selima: Studies on the Post-Glacial Peopling of the Sudanese Sahara

• Applicant: Jan Kuper
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497900944

About 10,000 years ago, one of the major population movements of prehistory took place in northern Africa – the post-glacial peopling of the Sahara. How did the process of colonising this unfamiliar region proceed? What role did innovations in the sphere of technology and subsistence play? And where did the people who settled the previously inhospitable area come from? During the Early Holocene, a northward shift of the monsoon rain belt caused increased precipitation, which, for thousands of years, transformed the Saharan desert into a savannah landscape – a livelihood for animals and humans. Numerous archaeological sites bear witness to this process and suggest that the Sahara was already populated at the beginning of the Holocene. Especially in its eastern part, environmental and settlement history has been a subject of intense research over the past decades, among others, through several projects funded by the DFG (B.O.S., SFB 69, SFB 389). Nevertheless, fundamental questions about the post-glacial peopling remain unanswered to this day. They include not only questions regarding the process of colonisation but also those regarding the origin of the colonisers. Did people at the beginning of the Holocene really follow the monsoon rains coming from the south, as often assumed? Currently, the oldest sites of this period are to be found in Egypt and thus in the northern part of the Eastern Sahara. In its southern, Sudanese part, some sites are known that can be roughly assigned to the Early Holocene, Epipaleolithic occupation phase, but due to a lack of absolute dating, it is not possible to determine their age more precisely. The proposed project is going to address this issue: In a region in northern Sudan, which only has been partially subject to archaeological surveys, excavations will be carried out at already known Epipaleolithic sites in the wider surroundings of the oasis of Selima. In addition to this, surveys and excavations in the adjacent "Selima Sand Sheet" region will be carried out as well as an examination of already recovered artefacts and lacustrine sediments. In order to address economic and palaeo-environmental questions, archaeozoological, archaeobotanical, sedimentological-geochemical, and lipid analyses are planned. The project will focus on three main questions: 1) Since when was the southern part of the Eastern Sahara colonised during the Early Holocene? 2) How did the process of the post-glacial peopling of the southern part of the Eastern Sahara proceed and how did innovations in the sphere of technology and subsistence, such as pottery and animal husbandry, contribute to this process? 3) How and when did the recolonisation phase in the southern part of the Eastern Sahara end and is there a relation to the rapid environmental changes at the end of the Early Holocene (“8.2 event”)? Funding is requested for two field campaigns in Northern Sudan and subsequent analyses.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants