In contrast to the Upper Palaeolithic Period, many Late Palaeolithic sites have been found in Upper Egypt, dating between 21,000 and
12,000 BP. The climate remained hyperarid, as it had been during the Upper Palaeolithic, but the river Nile had begun to contain less water and more clays because of aridity in its headwaters and because of important erosion activity due to the late glacial coldness affecting the highlands of Ethiopia. These clays were deposited in the Nile Valley, filling it in Upper Egypt with thick alluvia and resulting in a floodplain that, in Nubia, was 25-30 m. higher than the modern one. No Late Palaeolithic sites have been recorded in Lower and Middle Egypt, apparently because this part of the Nile Valley was more deeply cut, due to a very low water level in the Mediterranean Sea, a little more than 100 m. below the present level. This resulted in regressive erosion along the Nile, creating a surface that has been covered by more recent alluvia, concealing the sites from archaeologists.
There is great typological variety among Late Palaeolithic sites, and, because of our limited knowledge of the Upper Palaeolithic, it is diffi-cidt to determine the origins of the Late Palaeolithic. Among the different groups, the Fakhurian (21,000-19,500 bp) and the Kubbaniyan (19,000-17,000 bp) are the oldest. Although the Kubbaniyan was defined at Wadi Kubbaniya, near Aswan, sites have also been found near Esna and Edfu. At Wadi Kubbaniya, the sites occur in three different physiographic settings, all of which are related to a temporary lake barred yearly after the Nile flood inundation by a dune in the mouth of the wadi. After the size of the dune became so significant that the entire wadi was blocked, the lake was fed by the water table, thus creating an extremely favourable environment for hunter-gatherers. Some of the sites are situated on a dunefield that was occasionally flooded by the Nile; others are located on a flat silty plain of the wadi floor in front of the dunes; and finally there are sites on hillocks of fossil dunes in the flat area near the wadi mouth, which were surrounded by water during the period of inundation.
Most sites at Wadi Kubbaniya are the result of repeated use by small groups of people, perhaps several times a year, over a long period. The floral remains clearly reflect seasonality. Many edible plants, such as club-rush, camomile, and nut-grass tubers, must have been part of the diet. The presence of nut-grass tubers is particularly remarkable, since these would have had to have been thoroughly ground up in order to remove the toxins and break up the fibres. This might well explain the large number of grinding stones found at Wadi Kubbaniya. At Kubbaniyan and other Late Palaeolithic sites, fish were caught seasonally in large quantities, forming the major source of animal protein. One annual fishing season is indicated by an overwhelming frequency of catfish, indicating massive catches of spawning catfish, which appear with the rising floods of July and August. A second fishing season is characterized by the high frequency of surviving remains of yearling and adult Tilapia and numerous catfish. This spectrum suggests that fish were gathered in October or November in the shallow pools that remained after the inundation. In addition to fishing, hunting for hartebeest, wild cattle, and dorcas gazelle was an important aspect of the subsistence pattern. Lithics mainly consisted of bladelets obtained from opposed platform cores.
Four major tool classes are well represented in the Fakhurian. Backed bladelets, some with Ouchtata retouch, are the most frequent, followed by retouched pieces, perforators, notches, and denticulates. End-scrapers are present but less frequent, while truncations and Burins are rare and generally poorly made. The tool inventory of the Kubbaniyan is characterized by a predominance of backed bladelets, often with a non-invasive nibbling retouch, representing up to 80 per cent of all tools.
The kill-butchery camp site E71K12 near Esna belongs to the Fakhurian or is closely related to it. This site, which consists of a dune hollow in which a seasonal pond was fed by the rising groundwater during the summer floods, attracted animals that were driven from the floodplain by the rising water. This resulted in ideal hunting circumstances. There were three major prey animals: hartebeest, wild cattle, and gazelle. This site most probably represents the basic manner of subsistence during the late flood and the early post-flood period.
A distinctive feature of the Ballanan-Silsilian industry (16,000
15,000 bp) is debitage from single and opposed platform cores. Tools comprise backed bladelets and truncated bladelets. There was frequent use of the microburin technique, an innovation also found in the Negev and southern Israel and Jordan. While well-made burins are quite common, Ouchtata-retouch and geometric microliths are rare, while end-scrapers are never common.
Climatic changes by the end of the last Ice Age resulted in unusually high Nile water discharges around 13,000-12,000 bp, creating exceptionally high floods. This ‘Wild Nile’ stage was caused by climatic conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, but in Egypt itself there was no local rainfall. One site that was out of reach of the catastrophic inundations of the Wild Nile was Makhadma-4, an example of the Afian industry (12,900-12,300 bp), located about 6 m. above the modern floodplain, a little to the north of Qena. It was on the desert fringe, in a flat embay-ment resulting from the joining of different wadi bottoms, and its rich array of flsh remains includes 68 per cent Tilapia and 30 per cent Clarias, the rest consisting of Barbus, Synodontis, and Lutes. The high amount of Tilapia and the small size of both Tilapia and Clarias indicate that Ashing must have been practised rather late within the postflood season. The fish must have been caught in shallow basins through which the fishers were able to wade. The small size of the fish also suggests that sophisticated tackle, such as thrust baskets, nets, and scoop baskets, were used. The fish that were caught in large quantities were probably not all intended for immediate consumption, and the fact that the site includes pits containing a large amount of charcoal suggests that fish were being deliberately preserved by drying. The expansion of the site demonstrates that the locality was repeatedly used over a long period.
The Isnan industry has been attested on several sites between Wadi Kubbaniya and the Dishna plain. The assemblage is characterized by rough knapping techniques, resulting in thick and wide flakes, and the tool inventory is largely dominated by end-scrapers on flakes. At the site of Makhadma-2, fishing for Clarias seems to have been the economic basis. The occupation dates to 12,300 bp and therefore coincides with the Wild Nile floods.
The Qadan industry, between the second cataract and southern Egypt, is a microlithic flake assemblage, but its interest lies primarily in the fact that it is associated with three cemeteries. The most important is the cemetery at Gebel Sahaba, where fifty-nine skeletons were excavated. Each of them was in a semi-contracted position on the left side of the body, with the head to the east, facing south. The graves are simple pits, covered with slabs of sandstone, and the associated lithic material can be attributed to the final phase of the Qadan, around
12,000 BP. Out of the fifty-nine individuals, twenty-four showed signs of a violent death attested either by many chert points embedded in the bones (and even inside the skull) or by the presence of severe cut marks on the bones. The existence of multiple burials (including a group of up to eight bodies in one grave) confirms the picture of violence. Since women and children represent about 50 per cent of this population, it is most probable that the Gebel Sahaba cemetery represents an exceptionally dramatic event. It has been suggested that this may have been a consequence of the increasingly difficult conditions of living caused by the Wild Nile and the subsequent cutting down of the Nile into its former floodplain. A smaller cemetery, almost opposite Gebel Sahaba on the other side of the Nile, where such ‘projectiles’ were entirely absent from the bodies, shows that death was not always caused by violence at this date.
The chronological position of the Sebilian industry is not clear, despite the fact that it is the most widespread Late Palaeolithic industry, occurring from the second cataract to the north of the Qena bend. The Sebilian lithic technology is characterized by the manufacture of large flakes and a preference for quartzitic sandstones or volcanic rocks as raw material. This is completely incompatible with the lithic tradition of the other Late Palaeolithic industries. The Sebilian might, therefore, represent intrusive groups from the south, moving northwards along the Nile.
Before leaving the Late Palaeolithic it is necessary to mention that there may already have been rock art in the Nile Valley at this remote date. At Abka, near the second cataract, in Sudanese Nubia, a possible Instance of Late Palaeolithic rock art has been identified at ‘site XXXII’. In Egypt proper, there are also a few rock-art sites that appear to be preNeolithic in date. Among the most remarkable drawings are the fish traps represented at el-H6sh, south of Edfu. The plan of these labyrinthine fish fences consists of a complicated layout of curvilinear shapes leading to mushroom-shaped ends, which functioned as the actual traps. This type of fishing in shallow waters would fit well with the observations concerning massive fishing at Late Palaeolithic sites, such as Makhadma-4.
After the Late Palaeolithic, there was a hiatus in the occupation of the Nile Valley. No human presence has between attested in Egypt between 11,000 and 8000 bp, apart from a group of very small Ark-inian sites (around 9400 bp) in the region of the second cataract. It has been suggested that the attested down-cutting of the Nile during this period, with a reduced floodplain as a consequence, had a detrimental effect on the environmental conditions. Although this environmental change undoubtedly took place, it seems highly unlikely that the Nile Valley was entirely deserted at this date. It is more likely that these sites are simply covered by modern alluvial deposits, considering a narrowing of the floodplain and the normal location of sites on the fringe of the low desert.
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