Assimilations and replacements of early and middle Holocene ceramic productions across spatial and temporal boundaries in northern Sudan

The inception of ceramic technology in Sudan is a prerogative of early Holocene hunter-gatherers who established their settlements along the Nile Valley and in the surrounding savanna since the mid-ninth millennium BC. These groups were characterized by low mobility with semi-sedentary sites, a few burials within the settlements, or occasionally large cemeteries. The manufacture of pottery, in association with other technological productions (e.g., lithic and bone industries, ground stone tools), became systematic and intensive and is related to increased sedentism and the intensified practice of storing local foods. Growing social complexity also acted as a spur to the emergence of discrete ceramic traditions, which intertwined with different regional identities and local cultural spheres. Starting from the middle Holocene, although with distinct timing and pathways, the overall climatic, economic, and cultural conditions largely changed throughout Sudan. Pottery was then produced under novel circumstances and possibly by new human populations with different physical, morphological features, and socio-cultural traits. Changes and disappearances of ceramic shapes, techniques, and functions can be symptomatic of external or internal economic, cultural, or social stresses or needs (i.e., cultural interactions or assimilation, availability of raw materials, knowledge and skills of adaptation to the environmental problems in the acquisition of raw material, etc.). These processes of loss and replacement could be either progressive or rapid, as the ceramic productions by early Holocene hunter-gatherers (Khartoum Variant), Neolithic (Abkan) pastoralists, and Late Neolithic (A-Group and Pre-Kerma) agro-pastoralists clearly illustrate.