Introduction of Agriculture in Dakhleh

For the first time there is an opportunity to study the impact of the introduction of a developed agricultural economy into an area with a more primitive economic basis in north-east Africa. In the Dakhleh Oasis, we see the arrival of the Pharaonic Egyptians of the late Old Kingdom (~2300 B.C.) for the first time into an area where only Neolithic pastoralism was practiced. There are sites of that Sheikh Muftah Unit dating from before the time of contact and from after it, as well as separate sites of the ancient Egyptians. The analysis of the botanical evidence from a set of sites will provide a strong insight into the effect of the introduction of this new agricultural technology and the accompanying plants. This archaeobotanical study will be supplemented by the analysis of other artefactual and environmental evidence from these sites. There will be fresh excavations to gather this new evidence at several Sheikh Muftah sites as well as at Ein el-Gezareen, an Old Kingdom site of this period. Plant preservation is good and is found as charcoal, charred macro-remains and phytoliths.

In the late Old Kingdom, around 2300 B.C., Pharaonic Egyptians from the Nile Valley migrated to Dakhleh Oasis, a remote place in the centre of the Western Desert. There they met the last Neolithic peoples of the oasis, termed Sheikh Muftah. The Egyptians formed their capital at Ayn Asil, fortified in its initial stages, and several outlying settlements. Look-out posts for policing the desert were built on prominent hills. They brought with them their sophisticated agricultural technology which had been developed over the previous millennia and which created an immediately recognizable difference to the oasis landscape - the small rectangular field plots are still the dominant feature of the arable land today. As in the Nile Valley, irrigation was gravity fed. The necessary water was supplied by springs. In contrast to the Nile Valley, however, the farmers were not suffering from the vagaries of the annual flood, but enjoyed a year-round water supply. This might be the reason for the high reputation of the oasis regarding its fertility and this fertility in turn might have been the incentive for the colonisation of such a remote place. The lack of the fertilizing Nile floods, however, also had its draw-backs. The soils were quickly depleted of nutrients, and were also subject to increasing salinity, visible in the weed flora. Their cultivars were the same as in the Nile Valley, emmer wheat, barley, grape and possibly also lentil and flax. The climate had already reached its present state of hyperaridity and the surrounding savannahs were no longer supported by regular rainfall. As a consequence, most Sahelian elements in the aboreal flora had disappeared and only those which were able to establish along irrigation canals survived. Subsistence strategies for the resident Sheikh Muftah indigenes were based on hunting and herding. Their sites, about 70 so far ranging form single hearth-mounds to extensive scatters of lithic implements but lacking any architecture, are concentrated in the central lowlands of the oasis. To which extent they gathered wild plants or traded meat for cereals and other plant food still remains unresolved. That there must have been some exchange of goods is documented by finds of Pharaonic type pottery on Sheikh Muftah sites and vice versa, and by the occurrence of lentil in Sheikh Muftah context. The two cultures lived side by side for about a century. Then the Sheikh Muftah cultural remains disappear.