The Earliest Production and Spread of Pottery

The earliest pottery in the Eastern Sahara was found at Bir Kiseiba and Nabta Playa, dating to the tenth millennium BP. It first appeared at a few sites of the El Adam variant and showed impressed decorations on the outside surface forming simple impressions and dotted zigzags made with the rocker technique. It has been suggested that pottery was unusual when it was first invented and that its function was not related to ordinary use, but to social status, symbolizing luxury possessions. Pottery became more frequent in the El Nabta variant, dated between 8200 and 7900 BP. This increase in ceramic production has been related to an intensified use by larger groups that occupied the area for longer periods. The ceramic decorative types from El Nabta also include a typical Saharan decoration exhibiting dotted wavy lines. This type of decoration appears in the earliest pottery of the Central

Sahara, also dating from the tenth millennium BP, whereas in the Upper Nile Valley it is present, but appears from the middle of the eighth millennium BP, suggesting that it was introduced there from the Sahara. Its occurrence in the Eastern Sahara at a later period than the earliest pottery, but before the Nile Valley, corroborates a west-east movement of some Saharan traditions, such as dotted wavy line pottery.

Further considerations on the distribution and spread of early pottery and the populations who produced it come from the Gilf Kebir and the Great Sand Sea. A potsherd from the Wadi el Akhdar in the Gilf Kebir was dated to 9080 BP, whereas another one from the same site was dated to 6400 BP. Other dates obtained on more reliable materials span from 7700 BP. The earliest pottery in the Great Sand Sea is undecorated and dates to 7200 BP. These two areas are in an intermediate position between the Central Sahara and the Nile Valley. As the ecological conditions in the Gilf Kebir were slightly better than in the surrounding lowland areas, even during the phases of climatic deterioration, they could have encouraged contacts with Central Saharan groups and often acted as a ‘refugium’ for populations coming from the Central Sahara. The location of these areas and their availability of resources contributed to the diffusion of Central Saharan traditions toward the Nile Valley, through the Eastern Sahara.