Theme:
1. The Material Record: Current Trends and Future Directions
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Across Deserts and Seas: Tempos and Modes of Neolithization in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula
Content:
The Holocene witnessed a profound shift from millennia of hunting, gathering, and fishing to the emergence of food producers worldwide. However, the timing and nature of this transition to domestication varied greatly across the globe. In the Horn of Africa, renowned for its diverse ecological niches, this period still needs to be fully understood. To date, the earliest evidence of herding in the region can be traced back to the Middle Holocene. In contrast, in neighboring regions such as Sudan and the Arabian Peninsula, evidence for domestication practices date back to several thousand years earlier. Moreover, substantial evidence of exchange networks and intercontinental human interactions across the two shores of the Red Sea has been demonstrated since at least the Middle Holocene. However, the adoption of production economies was not always an unambiguous choice. Furthermore, while hunting-gathering-fishing were the only practices known in the Horn of Africa during the Early Holocene, the presence of small-scale herding practices without any evidence of cultivation were common in several regions of the Arabian Peninsula. Finally, in different areas, the adoption of agropastoralism did not necessarily coincide with pottery production, and vice versa. These complex divergences underscore the need for a comprehensive understanding of when and how the phenomenon of neolithization unfolded. In light of this considerable variability, likely influenced by highly diverse local paleoecological characteristics and potential bias in the preservation of organic remains, this session aims to foster discussions on the linked processes of the emergence of the Neolithic era in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. We invite papers submissions in the field of archaeozoology, archaeobotany, lithics, pottery, rock art, and genetics, all of which serve as valuable tools for deepening our knowledge of the emergence of the Neolithic within and across these two key regions.
Keywords:
Holocene, Neolithic, Human interaction, Neolithization, Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
yes
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
PaM - Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Community
Main organiser:
Olivier Scancarello (France) 1
Co-organisers:
Maria Pia Maiorano (Germany) 2
Affiliations:
1. Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, CEPAM
2. Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Archaeological Sciences, Dept. Near Eastern and Classical Archaeology
THIS SESSION CAN NOT BE SELECTED AT THIS MOMENT