User:Iamtired45/Esh Shaheinab

Esh Shaheinab
Esh Shaheinab is a African archaeological site dating to the Holocene. Artifacts from this site exemplify various traditions including the Early Khartoum (8800 to 5000 BC), Neolithic (4580-4460 BC and 4500-4380 BC*), and Late Neolithic (4th millennium BC ).

The site lies approximately 50 km north of Omdurman on the west bank of the Nile in central Sudan. The climate Shaheinab residents experienced was humid and its "wooded savannah" ecosystem ("patches of forest, grass and scrub") depended on large amounts of rain in the summer. Occupants relied heavily on the Nile for fishing while maintaining a hunter-gatherer economy. Remains of domesticated dwarf goats and some sheep indicate some participation in pastoralism however, the remains are so limited that Esh Shaheinab is not categorized as a pastoralist society.

A. J. Arkell was the first archaeologist to excavate the site (1949) with the intention of filling in the gaps that remain between northern and western Neolithic histories in Africa. He excavated hearths riddled with evidence of complex culture and various subsistence practices. After occupation that left the hearths, during the early Neolithic, it became a burial ground for occupants during the Late Neolithic. Numerous other archaeologist have visited the site since and published findings on pottery, food production, and tool production.

Pottery
Hunting-fishing-gathering groups can be attributed with the beginnings of pottery making in Sudan. Early pottery was manufactured by "semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers". With the increase of more permanent establishments, ceramic technologies grew to meet the need to store locally procured foods such as cereals and fish. The Khartoum Neolithic (5000-3800 BC ) (also called Shaheinab Neolithic) is a tradition that grew alongside these permanent sites, like Esh Shaheinab. Khartoum Neolithic can be classified based on the features of material culture and specifically the presence of dotted-wavy line pottery.

Dotted-wavy line pottery is a pottery type distinguished from wavy line pottery by Arkell, who's criteria for this distinction has since been criticized. Dotted-wavy line pottery was once believed to be developed from wavy line pottery but that has also since been dismissed. Many archaeologist have suggested cultural continuity amongst the "Nilo-Sahara-Sahel Belt" due to similarities in pottery and other material culture across these regions. Many attribute the continuity in pottery traditions as well as other innovations in material culture to be indicative of contact across regions. Concrete archaeological evidence has yet o be produced to allows make a definite conclusion and many argue against it based on the local derivation of materials for both pottery and lithic artifacts. However, plenty of archaeologist say a connection amongst Sudanese communities was possible due to the presence of material sources from far places.

Pottery in Esh Shaheinab is characteristic of three main traditions: Early Khartoum, Neolithic, and Late Neolithic. The majority of pot shards from Esh Shaheinab are Neolithic, while less are Early Khartoum, and the least are Neolithic. Each phase is distinguished by material use, processing, and decoration type with similarities spanning across all three.

Tool Technology
Esh Shaheinab was occupied right before the Neolithic period Africa, meaning it was a community on the cusp of pastoralism. Evidence of the beginning of the shift from a hunting-gathering community to a pastoralist community is present in the remains of domesticated breeds of dwarf goat and sheep. However, due to the consistent use of Esh Shaheinab as a permanent/semi-permanent settlement for hunting-gathering practices, it is clear this transition was a slow one.

The tool-kit at Esh Shaheinab is varied and reflects the lifestyle of a settled hunter-gatherer with reliance on the riverine ecosystem for subsistence. The onset of a humid and wet environment facilitated a change in the tool-kit of the traditional hunter-gatherer. Additions like bone-harpoons and fishhooks were frequent in sites like Esh Shaheinab indicating their frequent exploitation of the Nile for fish. During Arkell's excavation, tools like maceheads, axe heads (bone and stone), fishhooks, barbed bone harpoons, and gouges were found. Of them, the most frequent was gouges.

Gouges
Gouges are defined by Caton-Thompson and Gardner as:

“Artefact conical in outline. The dorsal face is either polished or polished and flaked. The ventral face is flaked only. The cross-section is a thin pointed oval. The working hollow edge is obtained by oblique flaking from the polished side”

In a detailed study by archaeologist Katarina Kapustka and Malgorzata Winiarska-Kabacinska, the gouges found at Esh Shaheinab were compared to gouges from the sites Sabaloka and Kadero so that many conclusions could be made surrounding the manufacturing and cultural significance of gouges during this time.

The gouges found at these sites were produced by professionals that were specialized in there fields. This means production of these tools was held to high standards and frequently completed by people who were experienced in manufacturing; evidence for this lies in the infrequent variability of the finalized gouges. Despite this, Esh Shaheinab has plenty of evidence for novice production of gouges, lending to the conclusion that gouges were produced at the site, instead of at the source of the natural resources.

The source for the material used for the making of these tools is predicted to be the area of Sabaloka which is located on the Sixth Nile Cataract. The prefered material from this location was red rhyolite, based on the higher proportion of gouges being made red rhyolite over the other variant (grey rhyolite). This fact poses an interesting question when it comes to the priorities in gouge quality. As Kapustka and Winiarska-Kabacinska state, it seems as though the occupants of Esh Shaheinab prioritized color over quality due to the "visible heterogeneities" in the red rhyolite, not found in the grey rhyolite.

Sabaloka is located farther from Esh Shaheinab, relative to the other sites in this study. When it came to distance from the source of raw material and production quality, there seemed to be a negative correlation, meaning, the father the site was from the source, the more refined the manufacturing process seems to be. The location relative to the source of raw material is also correlated to the frequency of repair (which includes polishing). The farther the site is from the source, the more repairs and polishing is done to gouges. This could indicate a greater importance placed on raw materials based on distance from the site.