The transition period between the late Pleistocene and the Holocene is characterized by significant climatic changes involving North African palaeo-environments, biodiversity and human populations. Some scientists admit that the palaeo-geography related to climatic changes involving shoreline migration may have led Late Pleistocene hunters/gatherers coastal groups to migrate towards the mainland and later island territories. Warming episodes subsequent to this transition, alternating with humid episodes of the Middle Holocene climatic optimum, favoured, new faunal assemblages and new human group settlements in the Sahara territories and the Saharan Atlas. Fluvial systems with good river flow were used for communication and traffic. During the Late Holocene, the climate environmental barrier which affected the northern Atlantic foothills, the lower pre-Saharan areas, and the neighbouring ergs, caused a slow-down in the trade between human groups that did not completely disappear while these communities adapted to past climate change. It was therefore during this period characterized by favourable climate (Early and Middle Holocene) that successive waves of Epipalaeolithic populations exhibiting various cultures, dispersed and hunted in the Maghreb (mouflons, antelopes, cattle, etc.) until the domestication of animals (Middle Holocene). The practice of new subsistence strategies (breeding, developing domestication), included the maintenance of hunting. Pastoral activity (sheep-goat-cattle) spread unhindered and communities settled in the mountains. Holocene populations have practiced multidirectional movements in the North African territory, towards island spaces, in later periods, and to the central Sahara. The way in which this was done is still unknown. The subject of the old settlement in these territories still rises to debates and leads to several hypotheses regarding the origin of these populations. The evidence of these movements and settlements is a comparable cultural elements collected in several sites, such as open-air sites and sheltered sites (technical knowledge, lithics, ceramics, ornaments, symbolic figurations, painted and engraved) and the knowledge of a large megalithic movement (middle Holocene) related with new funerary practices consisting of necropolises situated far away from habitats (funerary monuments). Through anthropological and genetic data (cemeteries), old circulation patterns can be reconstructed between the central Sahara (ancient Holocene) and the northern territories, although there are still a lot of data missing.
Keywords: Circulations, Transition, Final Pleistocene, Holocene, Maghreb, Mediterranean, Sahara.
The session proposes these main themes:
—Human mobility through the study of bone markers and industry.
—Migratory movements of wildlife.
—Areas of continental, coastal and island occupation (recent period).
—Hunting, fishing and domestication of vertebrates.
—Funeral complexes – Palegenomics.
Session proposed by Iddir Amara, Amel Chakroun, Alejandra C. Ordóñez, Jared Carballo Pérez, Thomas Perrin, Isabelle Sidéra
Programme (06/09/2021)
Résumés et programme à télécharger ici : S19-E_Résumés_UISPP_v2.
- 9:30 – 10:00 : Introduction
Iddir Amara, Amel Chakroun, Alejandra C. Ordóñez, Jared Carballo Pérez, Thomas Perrin, Isabelle Sidéra - 10:00 – 10:20 : The Quaternary fauna of Algeria and its representation in rock art: Paleogeography, extinctions, survivals
Iddir Amara, Djillali Hadjouis - 10:30 – 10:50 : An Integrated approach to the study of Phytoliths and Thin Sections from Ground Stone Tools at Elephantine, Aswan, Egypt
Elshafaey Attia, Claire Malleson, Dagmar Fritzsch, Johanna Sigl - 11:00 – 11:20 : La place sociale des enfants dans les sépultures néolithiques du Sahara central
Hayette Berkani - 11:30 – 11:50 : Hunting during the Early Bronze Age in Northern Italy: new data from the archaeozoological study of the pile dwelling site of Oppeano 4C (Verona)
Gianluca Arnetta, Federica Gonzato, Ursula Thun Hohenstein - 12:00 – 13:30 : Pause
- 13:30 – 13:50 : Trends in Bronze Age mollusc exploitation at Larda I and Larda II (Northeast Italy)
Silvia Gazzo, Marco Bertolini, Ursula Thun Hohenstein - 14:00 – 14:20 : Paleogenomic analysis of archaeological leather samples from indigenous archaeological sites in Las Cañadas del Teide (Canary Islands, Spain)
Javier G. Serrano, Emilio Vacas-Fumero, Milena Mirow, Selene Rodríguez-Caraballo, Clara Díaz-Pérez, Rosa Fregel, Matilde Arnay - 14:30 – 14:50 : Reprise des fouilles dans le site éponyme d’Oued Djebbana (Bir El Ater, Pléistocène supérieur, Atlas Saharien Oriental) : résultats préliminaires
Kahina Roumane, Yasmina ChaÏd Saoudi, Mounir Rachedi, Toufik Merzouk, Mourad Idiri, Ahmed Semchaoui, Tarek Zerrouki - 15:00 – 15:20 : Sem technology for the analysis of tiny calcified remains from a prehispanic burial from El Hierro (Canary Islands)
Alejandra C. Ordóñez, Emma Suárez-Toste, Emilio González-Reimers, Matilde Arnay De La-Rosa - 15:30 – 15:50 : The non-metric features of the calcaneus and talus in El Hormiguero
Samuel James Cockerill, Richard Giovanni Guamán - 16:00 – 16:20 : Sites néolithiques de surface du Sahara central : Résultats préliminaires du site de Taberchante (Kahlouche), Adrar, Algérie [poster]
Yasmina Damouche - 16:30 – 17:00 : Discussion