Alice Leplongeon

The prehistory of the Nile Valley between 75,000 and 15,000 years ago is key for the understanding of modern human diversity. This period corresponds to a global shift to more arid conditions which regionally translates into the expansion of the Sahara, the lowering of the sea level and the desiccation of some major eastern African lakes. This has important consequences on the behaviour of the Nile and on human populations living in its vicinity. In addition, the Nile Valley is located at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia, and as such is central to the issues of human dispersals ‘out-of’ as well as ‘back-into’ Africa, documented by genetic studies at that time. These major dispersals have contributed to shape our current biological and cultural diversity. Yet, there is little archaeological evidence for dispersals ‘out of’ and ‘back into’ Africa following the northern route through the Nile Valley. On the contrary, researchers who have worked in the Nile Valley have underlined the unique aspect of the cultural entities in the Nile at that time. The prehistory of the Nile Valley, therefore, appears to be “isolated” from the prehistory of neighbouring regions.

The first objective of this research project is to make a comprehensive review of the current knowledge of the Prehistory of the Nile Valley for the period between 75000 and 15000 years ago, with a specific focus on how archaeologists have approached the archaeological record. This review, including all recent palaeoenvironmental, genetic and archaeological data is a necessary prelude to in-depth discussions of human responses to environmental change and of possible links between technological variability, environmental change and modern human dispersals. Relying on this broader context, the second part of this research project aims to consider the place of the “Wendorf collection”, particularly the stone tool assemblages which have been little or not published, stored at the British Museum. These assemblages are unique as they are coming from contexts, nowadays inaccessible to archaeologists, which therefore represent a large part of what we can rely on to discuss prehistoric archaeology of the Nile Valley. New imagery techniques such as Reflectance Transformation Imagery (RTI) will be used in order to improve the analysis of stone tool assemblages as well as their documentation in the form of an open-access database in collaboration with the British Museum.