The period of time comprised between 38,000 and 10,000 years ago, covered in the present symposium, displays a diversified series of human occupations in northern Libya, some of them succeeding one after the other, others contemporaneously existing in different parts of the region. The various cultural horizons have been named with different terms, rarely being ‘Upper Palaeolithic’. The infrequency of this taxonomic identification does not infer an absence of cultural evidence. To the contrary, it implies that the human groups living in the region shared very few elements with the traditional Upper Palaeolithic populations of the western, northern and eastern Mediterranean basin. Libya is probably the ultimate frontier of cultures coming from the west (Maghreb), the east (Egypt and the Levant), and the south (Sahara) of the African continent. It is a crossroads for Maghrebi, Levantine, and Saharan traditions which blended with local cultural patterns. At different periods and in different areas, influences from one or the other region appear more clearly. One example for all can be the Haua Fteah cave which exhibits the Dabban, originally compared by McBurney with the “Emiran” of the Levant, followed by the Eastern Oranian, likened to the Oranian of Algeria. This paper provides an overview of the current status of the African record in the late Upper Pleistocene, it focuses on the various cultural developments particularly in the two main regions of northern Libya, the Jebel Gharbi (or Jebel Nafusa), located in the north-west of the country, and the Jebel Akhdar in Cyrenaica, and offers a critical review of the data.
The “Upper Palaeolithic” Seen from Northern Libya
GARCEA, Elena Antonella Alda
2006-01-01
Abstract
The period of time comprised between 38,000 and 10,000 years ago, covered in the present symposium, displays a diversified series of human occupations in northern Libya, some of them succeeding one after the other, others contemporaneously existing in different parts of the region. The various cultural horizons have been named with different terms, rarely being ‘Upper Palaeolithic’. The infrequency of this taxonomic identification does not infer an absence of cultural evidence. To the contrary, it implies that the human groups living in the region shared very few elements with the traditional Upper Palaeolithic populations of the western, northern and eastern Mediterranean basin. Libya is probably the ultimate frontier of cultures coming from the west (Maghreb), the east (Egypt and the Levant), and the south (Sahara) of the African continent. It is a crossroads for Maghrebi, Levantine, and Saharan traditions which blended with local cultural patterns. At different periods and in different areas, influences from one or the other region appear more clearly. One example for all can be the Haua Fteah cave which exhibits the Dabban, originally compared by McBurney with the “Emiran” of the Levant, followed by the Eastern Oranian, likened to the Oranian of Algeria. This paper provides an overview of the current status of the African record in the late Upper Pleistocene, it focuses on the various cultural developments particularly in the two main regions of northern Libya, the Jebel Gharbi (or Jebel Nafusa), located in the north-west of the country, and the Jebel Akhdar in Cyrenaica, and offers a critical review of the data.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.