Living in an Egyptian Oasis: Reconstruction of the Holocene Archaeological Sequence in Kharga

Within the Egyptian Western Desert, the Kharga Oasis was a particularly favourable and highly frequented area during the Holocene thanks to a permanent ground water supply. The high concentration and accessibility of archaeological sites here allows the cultural and economic changes to be documented at a local scale, when northeastern Africa was experiencing strong climatic variations and the transition to a food production economy. An expansive program led by the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) which included systematic survey, sampling collections, tests and stratigraphic excavations has dramatically increased the amount of data available concerning the prehistory of the Kharga Oasis. Typo-technological analyses focusing on the lithic industries, and other aspects of material culture, plus a series of 14 C dates have led to the definition of four main successive cultural phases: Kharga A, B, C and D. This paper describes this proposal of a new archaeological sequence for human occupation in the Kharga Oasis and discusses its integration in the wider frame of Egypt and the Eastern Sahara.