New findings on the significance of Jebel Moya in the eastern Sahel.

This paper presents new excavation data and new radiometric dates for Jebel Moya, south-central Sudan. These data suggest revisions to previous chronological understandings of the site. New excavations, initiated in 2017, show a longer, more continuous occupation of the site than has been previously recognised.

On the Origins and Dissemination of Domesticated Sorghum and Pearl Millet across Africa and into India: a View from the Butana Group of the Far Eastern Sahel.

Four decades have passed since Harlan and Stemler (1976) proposed the eastern Sahelian zone as the most likely center of domestication. Recently, new data on seed impressions on Butana Group pottery, from the fourth millennium BC in the southern Atbai region of the far eastern Sahelian Belt in Africa, show evidence for cultivation activities of sorghum displaying some domestication traits. may have been undergoing domestication shortly thereafter in the western Sahel, as finds of fully domesticated pearl millet are present in southeastern Mali by the second half of the third millennium BC, and present in eastern Sudan by the early second millennium BC.

Interactions and Pastoralism Along the Southern and Southeastern Frontiers of the Meroitic State, Sudan.

The Nilotic Meroitic state, in what is now the Sudan, existed from the late fourth century BC until the mid fourth century AD. It has come to be regarded in recent years as an African segmentary state with a prestige-goods economy, less centralised than, for example, Egypt, with direct control by the ruling family diminished outside the Shendi Reach (central Sudan). Outbound trade from its capital Meroe included ebony, elephants, gold, iron, ivory and ostrich feathers.

Jebel Moya (Sudan): new dates from a mortuary complex at the southern Meroitic frontier.

This paper proposes a new chronology for the burial complex at Jebel Moya, south-central Sudan. It reassesses the body of evidence from Sir Henry Wellcome's original 1911-1914 excavations in order to place the site within a firm chronological framework by: (a) applying an attribute-based approach to discern discrete pottery assemblages; and (b) applying initial OSL dates to facilitate the reliable dating of this site for the first time. Jebel Moya is re-interpreted as a burial complex situated on the southern periphery of the late Meroitic state, and its potential to serve as a chronological and cultural reference point for future studies in south-central and southern Sudan is outlined.

The Southern Frontier of the Meroitic State: The View from Jebel Moya.

The site of Jebel Moya, excavated in the early twentieth century, represents arguably the largest pastoral mortuary complex in Africa. Jebel Moya is resituated in relation to the neighbouring Meroitic-era agro-pastoral settlements and the only known Meroitic trading station (Sennar) in the southern Gezira Plain, Sudan. It is the first time that the known localities in the southern Gezira and southern Meroitic cemeteries have been compared, in an attempt to elucidate the different social organisation reflected in mortuary assemblages between the core and the periphery of the Meroitic State.

Revisiting a hoary chestnut: the nature of early cattle domestication in North-East Africa.

It has been almost three decades since the Wendorf & Schild-Andrew Smith debate over the timing and location of domesticated cattle in North Africa reached its climax. The time is now appropriate for a review of the old models in light of subsequent anatomical and genetic data which have come to light. This article summarises the main issues and models, and attempts to provide suggestions for future investigations.

Reconsidering the emergence of social complexity in early Saharan pastoral societies, 5000 - 2500 B.C.

Debates on the subject of cultural complexity and its material manifestations are situated at the centre of research on prehistoric pastoralism in North Africa. Employing already published databases, this article integrates raw data from archaeological sites across the Sahara with ethnography to generate a framework of analysis in which changes in material culture can be interpreted. It attempts to establish a relationship between the analysis of human and cattle remains in order to study (a) the relations between modes of interment of animals and of humans, and social changes, and (b) the processes responsible for the appearance of a symbolism of power in the mid- and late Holocene funerary rituals.