Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara: Volume 2: The Pottery of Nabta Playa / Edition 1

by Kit Nelson

Overview

The ceramic assemblages from the Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba area have played an important role in recognizing and defining the cultural sequence in the Egyptian Western desert. The exploration of the desert sites has yielded a ceramic chronology for the area that reaches back 6000 years to the earliest discovered pottery.

By taking a comprehensive approach to ceramic analysis, researchers were able to categorize pottery by scheme, construction, and distribution. This methodology allows for:

• describing the types of pottery uncovered;
• discussing the attempts at sourcing pottery;
• highlighting new methods of identifying types of pottery; and
• detailing the distribution of the various types from that region.
This work presents a first look at the Egyptian ceramic sequence in the light of the new archaeological evidence and will be of interest to archaeologists, ceramics specialists, and historians working in northern Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441933652
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	06/06/2011
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of hardcover 1st ed. 2002
Pages:	140
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.98(h) x 0.01(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; K. Nelson. 2. Ceramic Types of the Nabta-Kiseiba Area; K. Nelson. 3. Ceramic Assemblages of the Nabta-Kiseiba Area; K. Nelson. 4. Neolithic Ceramic Production in the Eastern Sahara of Egypt; M. Nieves Zedeño. 5. Early Neolithic Pottery of the Nabta-Kiseiba Area: Stylistic Attributes and Regional Relationships; M.C. Gatto. 6. Wavy Line Ceramics: Evidence from Northeastern Africa; F. Jesse. 7. Conclusions; K. Nelson. Appendix I: Petrographic Analysis. Appendix II: Petrographic Photomicrographs. References. Index.

Editorial Reviews

Researchers analyze pottery assemblages that, by location, construction, and surface condition, help establish a chronology for settlements in the Egyptian Western Desert from about 9,500 to about 3,500 years ago. They place the artifacts within a typological scheme, and address ceramic construction and distribution in order to document changing ceramic technology and the regional implications of ceramic distributions. No mention is made of the first volume. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"The Authors of this volume have to be praised for the level and the precision of their analyses.The pottery of the Nabta-Kiseiba deserves such an analysis as it documents one of the very first steps of ceramic craftsmanship in Africa."

(Journal of Anthropologuical Research, 59 (2003)

From the Publisher