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Mobility is a key theme in Saharan archaeology. From early human dispersal to the spread of the ‘Neolithic’ up to trade in the historical period, the Saharan regions have been crossed throughout the ages by people, artefacts and ideas on a uniquely large scale. In this area, archaeological research has evolved over time, but climatic and environmental variability has played a major role in the interpretation of past Saharan mobility. This article offers a review of papers on the mobility issue in African archaeology, comparing data from the Sahara and the rest of Africa from 1960 to the present. The main aim is to analyse the development of research on mobility in the Sahara, highlighting its main characteristics and peculiarities and suggesting the adoption of more nuanced approaches to the study of past mobility that may pave the way for ‘alternative’— or simply more refined — reconstructions of cultural trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the prehistoric green Sahara of Holocene North Africa-in contrast to the Neolithic of Europe and Eurasia-a reliance on cattle, sheep and goats emerged as a stable and widespread way of life, long before the first evidence for domesticated plants or settled village farming communities. The remarkable rock art found widely across the region depicts cattle herding among early Saharan pastoral groups, and includes rare scenes of milking; however, these images can rarely be reliably dated. Although the faunal evidence provides further confirmation of the importance of cattle and other domesticates, the scarcity of cattle bones makes it impossible to ascertain herd structures via kill-off patterns, thereby precluding interpretations of whether dairying was practiced. Because pottery production begins early in northern Africa the potential exists to investigate diet and subsistence practices using molecular and isotopic analyses of absorbed food residues. This approach has been successful in determining the chronology of dairying beginning in the 'Fertile Crescent' of the Near East and its spread across Europe. Here we report the first unequivocal chemical evidence, based on the ?13C and ?13C values of the major alkanoic acids of milk fat, for the adoption of dairying practices by prehistoric Saharan African people in the fifth millennium bc. Interpretations are supported by a new database of modern ruminant animal fats collected from Africa. These findings confirm the importance of 'lifetime products', such as milk, in early Saharan pastoralism, and provide an evolutionary context for the emergence of lactase persistence in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mountain ranges of the Tadrart Acacus and Messak in southwestern Libya (central Sahara) are widely known for their outstanding rock art inventory and some key prehistoric sites. This paper illustrates the preliminary outcomes of current investigations on the ‘Tifinagh’ inscriptions of the Tadrart Acacus the recording of which has recently increased thanks to the support of ‘Endangered Archives Programme’ of the British Library. Its aim is twofold: first, to outline the main steps of the project, placing these within the most relevant issues related to the phenomenon of writing in the Sahara, and second, to describe the results that have been achieved to date and to foresee possible avenues of development. In fact, although difficulties in both dating and decipherment have been repeatedly stressed through the years, we emphasise that Tifinagh texts can play an important role in the process of landscape interpretation. A proper ‘written landscape’, where humans left readable signs of their passages or their stays, can integrate other archaeological approaches pursued so far in the Tadrart Acacus and its surroundings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: We describe in this paper a traditional charcoal making technology occasionally adopted by Tuareg people in the hyper-arid central Sahara (SW Libya). This methodology (called esed) has been identified thanks to ethnobotanic and ethnographic interviews with people living in the Tadrart Acacus massif (the kel Tadrart Tuareg) and confirmed by macroscopic and micromorphological analyses of residual field evidence. Esed consisted of burning in situ trunks of dead Acacia tortilis (Forssk.) Hayne; subsequently, small portions of collapsed and still-burning wood were buried with sand in an attempt to ensure combustion under anoxic conditions. Our interviews elucidated that the esed technology is well known by people living in the region and has possibly been practiced for a long time. Surprisingly, local informants highlighted that esed was employed to made charcoal only during years marked by abrupt reduction of precipitation and consequently of natural resources. The last employment of esed dates to the dry phase of the mid-1970s, when charcoal was used as an exchangeable good. The discovery of this charcoal making technology shed new light on the capability of Tuareg to manage the few natural resources available in marginal environments and to cope with rapid climate changes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Rock shelters in the central Saharan massifs preserve anthropogenic stratigraphic sequences that represent both a precious archive for the prehistory of the region and a powerful proxy data for Holocene palaeoenvironments. The geoarchaeological (micromorphology) and archaeobotanical (pollen analysis) approaches were integrated to investigate the anthropogenic sedimentary sequence preserved within the Takarkori rock shelter, a Holocene archaeological site located in the Libyan central Sahara (southern Tadrart Acacus massif). The site was occupied throughout the Early and Middle Holocene (African Humid Period) by groups of hunter–gatherers before and by pastoral communities later. The investigation on the inner part of the sequence allows to recognize the anthropogenic contribution to sedimentation process, and to reconstruct the major changes in the Holocene climate. At the bottom of the stratigraphic sequence, evidence for the earliest frequentation of the site by hunters and gatherers has been recognized; it is dated to c. 10,170 cal yr BP and is characterized by high availability of water, freshwater habitats and sparsely wooded savannah vegetation. A second Early Holocene occupation ended at c. 8180 cal yr BP; this phase is marked by increased aridity: sediments progressively richer in organics, testifying to a more intense occupation of the site, and pollen spectra indicating a decrease of grassland and the spreading of cattails, which followed a general lowering of lake level or widening of shallow-water marginal habitats near the site. After this period, a new occupational phase is dated between c. 8180 and 5610 cal yr BP; this period saw the beginning of the frequentation of pastoral groups and is marked by an important change in the forming processes of the sequence. Sediments and pollen spectra confirm a new increase in water availability, which led to a change in the landscape surrounding the Takarkori rock shelter with the spreading of water bodies. The upper part of the sequence, dating between c. 5700 and 4650 cal yr BP records a significant environmental instability towards dryer climatic conditions, consistent with the end of the African Humid Period. Though some freshwater habitats were still present, increasing aridity pushed the expansion of the dry savannah. The final transition to arid conditions is indicated by the preservation of ovicaprines dung layers at the top of the sequence together with sandstone blocks collapsed from the shelter's vault. On the contrary, the outer part of the sequence preserves a significantly different palaeoenvironmental signal; in fact, the surface was exposed to rainfall and a complex pedogenetic evolution of the sequence occurred, encompassing the formation of an argillic laminar horizon at the topsoil, the evolution of a desert pavement, and the deposition of Mn-rich rock varnish on stones. These processes are an effect of the general environmental instability that occurred in the central Sahara since the Middle Holocene transition. Finally, the local palaeoclimatic significance of the sequence fits well with Holocene regional and continental environmental changes recorded by many palaeohydrological records from North Africa. This highlights the potential of geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical investigations in interpreting the palaeoenvironmental significance of anthropogenic cave sediments in arid lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]