Semi-permanent foragers in semi-arid environments of North Africa

Abstract

Abstract Early Holocene foragers in North Africa provide unique responses to adaptational patterns of non-agricultural societies and they can offer intriguing answers to questions regarding relationships between sedentism, economy and sociocultural complexity. Three points are of major relevance for understanding late foragers in North Africa: first, fishing, sustained by reduced mobility, was a common practice at sites located along perennial rivers, such as the Nile, or seasonal watercourses (wadis); second, the successive shift to a food-producing economy implied the acquisition of nomadic pastoralism; third, agriculture has never been a feasible economic practice in desert and peri-desert environments. The practice of fishing and the scarcity of moist lands away from watercourses encouraged more permanent settlement of sites by the water, which offered nutritional resources to plants, animals, as well as humans. The combination of these economic adjustments and environmental conditions favoured social organizations based on continual occupations of semi-permanent settlements and led to a population increase, which – in turn – triggered the rise of sociocultural complexity and new technological productions, such as pottery and groundstone, before the adoption of any form of food production. This paper presents the socioeconomic dynamics of Early Holocene foragers in North Africa and offers examples from the Central Sahara and the Upper Nile Valley, where the author has conducted research for almost two decades.