Hostname: page-component-669899f699-rg895 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-30T22:58:20.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The long-distance exchange of amazonite and increasing social complexity in the Sudanese Neolithic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2018

Andrea Zerboni ,
Sandro Salvatori ,
Pietro Vignola ,
Abd el Rahman Ali Mohammed  and
Donatella Usai
Andrea Zerboni*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra ‘A. Desio’, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via L. Mangiagalli 34, I-20133 Milano, Italy
Sandro Salvatori
Affiliation:
Centro Studi Sudanesi e Sub-Sahariani, Via Canizzano, 128/D, 31100 Treviso, Italy
Pietro Vignola
Affiliation:
C.N.R.-Istituto per la Dinamica dei Processi Ambientali, Via S. Botticelli 23, I-20133 Milano, Italy
Abd el Rahman Ali Mohammed
Affiliation:
National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, Khartoum, Sudan
Donatella Usai
Affiliation:
Centro Studi Sudanesi e Sub-Sahariani, Via Canizzano, 128/D, 31100 Treviso, Italy Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità, Sapienza Università di Roma, Via dei Volsci 122, I-00185 Roma, Italy
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The presence of exotic materials in funerary contexts in the Sudanese Nile Valley suggests increasing social complexity during the fifth and sixth millennia BC. Amazonite, both in artefact and raw material form, is frequently recovered from Neolithic Sudanese sites, yet its provenance remains unknown. Geochemical analyses of North and East African raw amazonite outcrops and artefacts found at the Neolithic cemetery of R12 in the Sudanese Nile Valley reveals southern Ethiopia as the source of the R12 amazonite. This research, along with data on different exotic materials from contemporaneous Sudanese cemeteries, suggests a previously unknown, long-distance North African exchange network and confirms the emergence of local craft specialisation as part of larger-scale developing social complexity.

Keywords

SudanNeolithicamazonitesocial complexityexchange
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 92 , Issue 365 , October 2018 , pp. 1195 - 1209
Copyright
© Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Arkell, A.J. 1953. Shaheinab. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bar-Yosef Mayer, D.E. & Porat, N.. 2008. Green stone beads at the dawn of agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 105: 8548–8551. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0709931105 Google Scholar
Bar-Yosef Mayer, D.E., Porat, N., Gal, Z., Shalem, D. & Smithline, H.. 2004. Steatite beads at Peqi’in: long-distance trade and pyro-technology during the Chalcolithic of the Levant. Journal of Archaeological Science 31: 493–502. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2003.10.007 Google Scholar
Bednarik, R.G. 2005. Middle Pleistocene beads and symbolism. Anthropos 100: 537–552.Google Scholar
Bouzouggar, A., Barton, N., Vanhaeren, M., D’errico, F., Collcutt, S., Higham, T., Hodge, E., Parfitt, S., Rhodes, E., Schwenninger, J.-L., Stringer, C., Turner, E., Ward, S., Moutmir, A. & Stambouli, A.. 2007. 82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and implications for the origins of modern human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 104: 9964–9969. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0703877104 Google Scholar
Brandt, S. 1986. The Upper Pleistocene and Early Holocene prehistory of the Horn of Africa. African Archaeological Review 4: 41–82. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01117035 Google Scholar
Caneva, I. (ed.). 1988. El Geili. The history of a Middle Nile environment 7000 B.C.–A.D. 1500. Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Caneva, I. 1993. Pre-pastoral Middle Nile: local developments and Saharan contacts, in L. Krzyżaniak, M. Kobusiewicz & J. Alexander (ed.) Environmental change and human culture in the Nile Basin and Northern Africa until the second millennium B: 405–411. Poznań: Poznań Archaeological Museum.Google Scholar
Černý, P. & Ercit, S.. 2005. The classification of granitic pegmatites revisited. Canadian Mineralogist 43: 2005–2026. https://doi.org/10.2113/gscanmin.43.6.2005 Google Scholar
Chłodnicki, M. 2011. Prehistoric settlement, in M. Chłodnicki, M. Kobusiewicz & K. Kroeper (ed.) The Lech Krzyżaniak excavations in the Sudan. Kadero: 53–55. Poznán: Poznán Archaeological Museum.Google Scholar
Chłodnicki, M., Kobusiewicz, M. & Kroeper, K. (ed.). 2011. The Lech Krzyżaniak excavations in the Sudan. Kadero. Poznán: Poznán Archaeological Museum.Google Scholar
Cohen, A.P. 1985. The symbolic construction of community. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203323373 Google Scholar
Dal Sasso, G., Maritan, L., Salvatori, S., Mazzoli, C. & Artioli, G.. 2014. Discriminating pottery production by image analysis: a case study of Mesolithic and Neolithic pottery from Al Khiday (Khartoum, Sudan). Journal of Archaeological Science 46: 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.03.004 Google Scholar
d’Errico, F., HenshilWood, C.H., Vanhaeren, M. & Van Niekerk, K.. 2005. Nassarius kraussianus shell beads from Blombos Cave: evidence for symbolic behaviour in the Middle Stone Age. Journal of Human Evolution 48: 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.09.002 Google Scholar
de Michele, V. & Piacenza, B.. 1999. L’amazzonite di Eghei Zuma (Tibesti settentrionale, Libia). Sahara 11: 109–112.Google Scholar
Deer, W.A., Howi, R.A. & Zussman, J.. 1992. An introduction to the rock-forming minerals (2nd edition). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.Google Scholar
Derevianko, A.P., Postnov, A.V., Rybin, E.P., Kuzmin, Y.V. & Keates, S.G.. 2005. The Pleistocene peopling of Siberia: a review of environmental and behavioural aspects. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 25: 57–68.Google Scholar
Dillian, C.D. & White, C.L.. 2010. Introduction: perspectives on trade and exchange, in C.D. Dillian & C.L. White (ed.) Trade and exchange. Archaeological studies from history and prehistory: 3–14. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Dillian, C.D., Bello, C.A. & Shackley, M.S.. 2010. Long-distance exchange of obsidian in the mid-Atlantic United States, in C.D. Dillian & C.L. White (ed.) Trade and exchange. Archaeological studies from history and prehistory: 17–35. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Düring, B. 2014. Material and craft networks in the prehistory of Asia Minor: transformations in values and societies, in K. Rebay-Salisbury, A. Brysbaert & L. Foxhall (ed.) Knowledge networks and craft traditions in the ancient world: material crossovers: 7–22. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
El-Anwar, S. 1981. Archaeological excavations on the west bank of the River Nile in the Khartoum area. Nyame Akuma 18: 42–45.Google Scholar
Fattovich, R., Marks, A.E. & Mohammed-Ali, A.. 1984. The archaeology of the eastern Sahel, Sudan: preliminary report. African Archaeological Review 2: 173–188. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01117231 Google Scholar
Fernández, V.M., Jimeno, A., Menendez, M. & Trancho, G.. 1989. The Neolithic site Haj Yusif (central Sudan). Trabajos de Prehistoria 46: 261–269. https://doi.org/10.3989/tp.1989.v46.i0.598 Google Scholar
Fernández, V.M., Jimeno, A. & Menéndez, M.. 2003. Archaeological excavations in prehistoric sites of the Blue Nile area, central Sudan. Complutum 14: 273–344.Google Scholar
Finneran, N. 2007. The archaeology of Ethiopia. Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fogelin, L. 2007. The archaeology of religious ritual. Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 55–71. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.36.081406.094425 Google Scholar
Freund, K.P. & Batist, Z.. 2014. Sardinian obsidian circulation and early maritime navigation in the Neolithic as shown through social network analysis. Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology 9: 364–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/15564894.2014.881937 Google Scholar
Fuhrman, M.L. & Lindsley, D.H.. 1988. Ternary-feldspar modelling and thermometry. American Mineralogist 73: 201–215.Google Scholar
Gatto, M.C. 2011. The Nubian pastoral culture as link between Egypt and Africa: a view from the archaeological record, in K. Exell (ed.) Egypt in its African context. Proceedings of the conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, 2–4 October 2009: 21–29. Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Gibaja, J.F., González, P., Martín, A., Palomo, A., Petit, M.A., Plasencia, X., Remolins, G. & Terradas, X.. 2014. New finds of obsidian blades at Neolithic sites in north-eastern Iberia. Antiquity Project Gallery 88(340). Available at: http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/gibaja340 (accessed 21 August 2018).Google Scholar
Hildebrand, E.A., Brandt, S.A. & Lesur-Gebremariam, J.. 2010. The Holocene archaeology of southwest Ethiopia: new insights from the Kafa Archaeological Project. African Archaeological Review 27: 255–289. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-010-9079-8 Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1995. Theory and practice in archaeology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 2010. Religion in the emergence of civilization: Çatalhöyük as a case study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Honegger, M. 2004. Settlement and cemeteries of the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic at el-Barga (Kerma region). Sudan & Nubia 8: 27–32.Google Scholar
Honegger, M. 2005. Kerma et les débuts du nèolithique africain. Genava LIII: 239–249.Google Scholar
Madella, M., Garcia-Granero, J.J., Out, W.A., Ryan, P. & Usai, D.. 2014. Microbotanical evidence of domestic cereals in Africa 7000 years ago. PLoS One 9(10): e110177. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110177 Google Scholar
Manzo, A. 2017. Eastern Sudan in its setting (Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 94) . Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Marks, A.E. & Fattovich, R.. 1989. The later prehistory of the eastern Sudan: a preliminary view, in L. Krzyzaniak & M. Kobusiewicz (ed.) Late prehistory of the Nile Basin and the Sahara: 451–472. Poznan´: Poznan´ Archaeological Museum.Google Scholar
Marshall, F. & Hildebrand, E.. 2002. Cattle before crops: the beginnings of food production in Africa. Journal of World Prehistory 16: 99–143. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019954903395 Google Scholar
Martin, R.F., de Vito, C. & Pezzotta, F.. 2008. Why is amazonitic K-feldspar an earmark of NYF-type granitic pegmatites? Clues from hybrid pegmatites in Madagascar. American Mineralogist 93(2–3): 263–269. https://doi.org/10.2138/am.2008.2595 Google Scholar
Ministry of Energy & Mining . 2004 . Geological map of Sudan. Berlin: Geological Research Authority of the Sudan.Google Scholar
Monod, T. 1974. Le mythe de ‘l’Émeraude des Garamantes’. Antiquités africaines 8: 51–66.Google Scholar
Nicholson, P.T. & Shaw, I. (ed.). 2000. Ancient Egyptian materials and technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Out, W.A., Ryan, P., García-Granero, J.J., Barastegui, J., Maritan, L., Madella, M. & Usai, D.. 2016. Plant exploitation in Neolithic Sudan: a review in the light of new data from the cemeteries R12 and Ghaba. Quaternary International 412: 36–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.12.066 Google Scholar
Perlès, C. 2001. The Early Neolithic in Greece. The first farming communities in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511612855 Google Scholar
Reinold, J. 2004. Le Néolithique soudanais: funéraire et structures sociales, in J. Guilaine (ed.) Aux marges des grands foyers du Néolithique. Périphéries débitrices ou créatrices?: 151–174. Paris: Éditions Errance.Google Scholar
– 2007. La nécropole Néolithique d’el-Kadada au Soudan central. Volume I. Les cimetières A et B (NE-36-O/3-V-2 et NE-36-O/3-V-3) du kôm principal. Paris: Éditions Recherches sur les Civilisations. Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1977. Alternative models for exchange and spatial distribution, in T.K. Earle & J.E. Ericson (ed.) Exchange systems in prehistory: 71–90. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Richter, T., Garrard, A.N., Allock, S. & Maher, L.A.. 2011. Interaction before agriculture: exchanging material and sharing knowledge in the Final Pleistocene Levant. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 21: 95–114. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774311000060 Google Scholar
Rosen, S.A., Tykot, R.H. & Gottesman, M.. 2005. Long-distance trinket trade: Early Bronze Age obsidian from the Negev. Journal of Archaeological Science 32: 775–784. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.01.001 Google Scholar
Rosenberg, D., Getzov, N. & Assaf, A.. 2010. New light on long-distance ties in the Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic Near East. Current Anthropology 51: 281–293. https://doi.org/10.1086/650562 Google Scholar
Salvatori, S. 2008. Pottery for the dead: a survey of a grave goods, in S. Salvatori & D. Usai (ed.) A Neolithic cemetery in the Northern Dongola Reach (Sudan): excavation at site R12: 9–19. London: Sudan Archaeological Research Society.Google Scholar
Salvatori, S. 2012. Disclosing archaeological complexity of the Khartoum Mesolithic. New data at the site and regional level. African Archaeological Review 29: 399–472. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-012-9119-7 Google Scholar
Salvatori, S. & Usai, D. (ed.). 2008a. A Neolithic cemetery in the Northern Dongola Reach. Excavations at site R12. London: Sudan Archaeological Research Society.Google Scholar
– 2008b. Bright and colourful: the jewellery of R12, in S. Salvatori & D. Usai (ed.) A Neolithic cemetery in the Northern Dongola Reach (Sudan): excavation at site R12: 21–31. London: Sudan Archaeological Research Society.Google Scholar
– 2016. Pottery description & typology, in S. Salvatori, D. Usai & Y. Lecointe (ed.) Ghaba: an Early Neolithic cemetery in central Sudan, volume 1: 17–48. Frankfurt: Africa Magna.Google Scholar
Savatori, S., Usai, D. & Zerboni, A.. 2011. Mesolithic site formation and palaeoenvironment along the White Nile (central Sudan). African Archaeological Review 28: 177–211.Google Scholar
Salvatori, S., Usai, D. & Lecointe, Y. (ed.). 2016. Ghaba: an Early Neolithic cemetery in central Sudan. Frankfurt: Africa Magna.Google Scholar
Shiner, J.L. (ed.). 1971. The prehistory and the geology of northern Sudan. Unpublished report to the National Science Foundation.Google Scholar
Simmons, W., Webber, K.L., Falster, A.U. & Nizamoff, F.W.. 2003. Pegmatology—pegmatite mineralogy, petrology and petrogenesis. New Orleans (LA): Rubellite.Google Scholar
Usai, D. 2014. Recent advances in understanding the prehistory of Central Sudan, in J.R. Anderson & D.A. Welsby (ed.) The Fourth Cataract and beyond. Proceedings of the 12 th International Conference of Nubian Studies: 31–44. Leuven: Peeters.Google Scholar
Usai, D. 2016. Bead-making in Neolithic Sudan, in S. Salvatori, D. Usai & Y. Lecointe (ed.) Ghaba: an Early Neolithic cemetery in central Sudan: 59–70. Frankfurt: Africa Magna.Google Scholar
Vanhaeren, M. & d’Errico, F.. 2005. Grave goods from the Saint-Germain-la-Rivière burial: evidence for social inequality in the Upper Palaeolithic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 24: 117–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2005.01.001 Google Scholar
Watkins, T. 2008. Supra-regional networks in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia. Journal of World Prehistory 21: 139–171. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-008-9013-z Google Scholar
Welsby, D.A. (ed.). 2001. Life in the desert. Seven thousand years of settlement in the Northern Dongola Reach, Sudan. London: Sudan Archaeological Research Society.Google Scholar
Wengrow, D., Dee, M., Foster, S., Stevenson, A. & Ramsey, C.B.. 2014. Cultural convergence in the Neolithic of the Nile Valley: a prehistoric perspective on Egypt’s place in Africa. Antiquity 88: 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00050249 Google Scholar
White, R. 1989. Production complexity and standardization in early Aurignacian bead and pendant manufacture: evolutionary implications, in P. Mellars & C. Stringer (ed.) The human revolution: behavioral and biological perspectives on the origins of modern humans: 366–390. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Wise, M.A. 1999. Characterization and classification of NYF-type pegmatites. The Canadian Mineralogist 37: 802–803.Google Scholar
Zerboni, A. & Vignola, P.. 2013. Green stone beads from the excavation in Fewet, in L. Mori (ed.) Life and death of a rural village in Garamantian times. Archaeological investigations in the Fewet oasis (Libyan Sahara) (Arid Zone Archaeology Monographs 6) : 157–168. Firenze: Edizioni all’Insegna del Giglio.Google Scholar
Zerboni, A., Vignola, P., Gatto, M.C., Risplendente, A. & Mori, L.. 2017. Looking for the Garamantian emerald: reconsidering the green-coloured stone beads trade in the ancient Sahara. The Canadian Mineralogist 55: 651–668. https://doi.org/10.3749/canmin.1600052 Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Zerboni et al. supplementary material

Zerboni et al. supplementary material 1

Download Zerboni et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.3 MB