Site Formation Processes, Occupation and Changing Environments in Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Libya: A Micromorphological Perspective from the Haua Fteah, Cyrenaica.

  • Author: Robyn Inglis, Charles French, Chris Hunt, Tim Reynolds & Graeme Barker
  • Topic: 40,000 to 250,000 BP,Environmental archaeology
  • Country: Libya
  • Related Congress: 13th Congress, Dakar

The environmental contexts of late Pleistocene occupations in North Africa are key to the dispersal of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs). Shifting environments controlled the movements of the late Middle and Upper Palaeolithic populations via corridors through the now hyper-arid Sahara during Oxygen Isotope Stages 5-3. The archaeological sequence at the Haua Fteah, Libya, lies at a crossroads in these corridors between the Nile, the Maghreb, and Saharan routes. Excavated in the 1950’s, and currently undergoing re-excavation by the Cyrenaica Prehistory Project, the 14m deep stratigraphy encompasses a sequence from the ‘Libyan Pre-Aurignacian’ to modern-day stabling deposits, representing, according to present chronologies, up to 200,000 years of sedimentation. Cave and rockshelter sediments, similar to those at the Haua Fteah, result from complex interplay between anthropogenic and ‘natural’ influences, and contain high-resolution histories of cultural and environmental change. These histories contain hiatuses, truncated units and changing rates of sedimentation which can only be detected through microstratigraphic study, and understanding of these site formation processes is fundamental to the cultural and environmental chronologies built upon such sequences. This paper will present results from ongoing doctoral research into the environmental and behavioural potential of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic layers at the Haua Fteah. Through the application of soil micromorphology, and associated physical and chemical analyses, a detailed site formation history will be developed, and its implications for the use of on-site environmental records in wider debates surrounding palaeoenvironmental controls on the dispersal of AMHs in North Africa considered.


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