Obsidian value and exchange in the southern Red Sea region and its role in the establishment of prehistoric complex societies: new data from South Arabia and the African Horn

Summary

The Red Sea is renowned as a locus of maritime activity during the early historic periods. As a result of systematic obsidian analyses of sources and artifacts, maritime interaction can now be traced back to the beginnings of the Neolithic in South Arabia. Its increased intensity is echoed in the cultural sphere that eventually formed on opposing shores of the two continents by at least the third millennium BC. New geochemical, archaeological and technological data from South Arabia, Ethiopia and Djibouti illustrate the current state of research on Afro-Arabian prehistoric interactions, highlighting variabilities and relationships between two mirroring regions either bound or separated by the Red Sea. While major chronological gaps remain regarding the transition from the LSA to the Neolithic, the study of lithic and faunal material from several sites allows us to note major technological and subsistence shifts that occurred independently in each region, but also early links, such as maritime interaction, that may have affected the nature of the process of neolithization. Finally, we discuss obsidian circulation in light of elements of cultural convergence that make up the Red Sea cultural sphere and which occur sometime in the late 4th millennium BC.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage