Sahara Anthropology

Michael Brass

Late Stone Age North and West Africa have been stereotyped as a monolithic culture in two hypotheses: the African Aqualithic and the Neolithique de Tradition Soudanis. Lithic diversity was ignored in favor of a broad-based cultural tradition defined by remains from aquatic activities and by the supposed observance of wavy-line and dotted wavy-line pottery. However, a recent reanalysis of Saharan pottery concluded that wavy-line pottery constitutes a pottery mode-tradition rather than a horizon style, thus restricting the value and applicability of the Khartoum Horizon Style to the dotted wavy-line component only for the Sahara-Sahel Belt. The dotted wavy-line motifs frequently appear with other motifs on the sherds, reducing their diagnostic value and highlighting the cultural variability of the region in the early Holocene. Furthermore, some of these motifs are misidentified. In addition, the McIntoshes, influenced by the ferrocentric tenets of Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa , dismissed early ...

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