The Early Holocene Archaeological Evidence (Site E-05-1) in Bargat El-Shab (Western Desert Egypt)

Bargat El-Shab, situated in the southern part of the Western Desert in Egypt, is one of those places which have been drawing people’s attention from the beginning of the Holocene. Numerous traces of human settlement have been registered on the eastern shore of a small palaeolake-playa, including a site dated to the climatic optimum of the Holocene. Features discovered during research initiated by the CPE at the beginning of the century, which include storage pits and hearths, held not only an abundance of stone artefacts and to a lesser extent ceramic artefacts in its fills, but also had exceptionally rich archaeological and archaeobotanical material. All this provided new and valuable information about the lives of hunter-gatherer communities/ or Neolithic pastoral communities, representing the so-called El Nabta / Al Jerar variant of settlement in the Western Desert.