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In the later part of the Holocene, fishers and hunter-gatherers in Northern Africa created pottery that was characterized by the decorative cohesive and dotted wavy lines. These pieces were created between ten thousand and five thousand years ago, during the African Humid Period. These fisher-hunter-gatherers lived in semi-permanent and permanent settlements along the numerous bodies of water that existed in the now-arid regions of North and East Africa. These settlements are characterized by the discovery of wavy line pottery found in conjunction with barbed bone points, which are adaptations for an aqualithic lifestyle.

Many pieces of the wavy line and dotted wavy line pottery were discovered in the Khartoum Hospital and Shaheinab sites in the Nile Valley of Sudan. Khartoum was settled during the Mesolithic era, and the Khartoum Hospital was the first hospital of the settlement. The Shaheinab site is just North of the Khartoum site on the West bank of the Nile River. Extensive excavations were done at these sites by archaeologist A. J. Arkell in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Arkell defined that the Wavy Line Pottery was characteristic of the Early Mesolithic, while the Dotted Wavy Line pottery was characteristic of the Late Mesolithic.

Similar pottery, also characterized by Incised and Dotted Wavy Line pottery was discovered in the Lake Turkana Basin of Kenya. This pottery is similar to that of Northeast Africa, especially the Khartoum pottery, although there are regional differences.