Thread by @ICrevecoeur

Very happy to see this great collaborative work out! Jebel Sahaba deserved a reassessment: nature.com/articles/s4159…
#Prehistory #Archaeology #Africa #Anthropology #violence
@INEE_CNRS @PACEA_Bordeaux @umr5608_traces @britishmuseum
What is new? 🧵 1/17

⛏️🧹Discovered and excavated during the 60s, published in 1968 by Pr. Wendorf, Jebel Sahaba cemetery has become the emblem of organized prehistoric warfare. However, the nature of the cemetery, of the bone lesions and of the associated lithics were never reassessed since (2/17)

🔬Between 2013 and 2019, with Marie-Hélène Dias-Meirinho @UTJeanJaures, we conducted a thorough macroscopic and microscopic analysis of every bone from the 61 individuals, currently housed @britishmuseum, that were buried in the cemetery (3/17)

🦴In addition to the 20 individual originally identified with lesions, we added a new 21 individuals, and we discovered 107 unidentified lesions, and 13 new lithics embedded on these now 41 individuals affected with injuries (4/17)

🐎🏹We used results of experimental archaeological studies on the impact of projectile weapons on ungulates to characterized the lesions observed on the bones of the Jebel Sahaba individuals (5/17)

☠️🩸We showed that out of the 41 individuals with lesions, 19 have healed or unhealed injuries related to projectile impact, a further 11 individuals exhibit also traumatic lesions (fractures and blunt force trauma) in relation to close combat (6/17)

🧑🤝🧑Looking at the anatomical pattern of the lesion and the identity of the victims, female and male were attacked indistinctively, projectile impact marks being mostly located in the pelvis area and the legs. Only children exhibit higher frequency of cranial injuries (7/17)

❤️🩹Several individuals present both healed and unhealed traumas and/or projectile impact marks, some with embedded lithic chips, suggesting that these interpersonal violence events were repetitive, at a lifetime scale, and not always lethal (8/17)

⚰️This supports that Jebel Sahaba is not a disaster cemetery related to a single armed conflict. Some burials were disturbed by the deposition of new ones, and the mortality profile of the cemetery doesn’t show any anomaly (no overrepresented adolescents/young adults) (9/17)

⚔️Rather the archaeological data, and anthropological reassessment favor the hypothesis of sporadic and recurrent small scale conflict in the form of raid, skirmishes or ambush attacks between members of hunter-fisher-gatherer communities in the Nile Valley (10/17)

🏹Lithic flakes and chips found in the graves, inside the volume of the body, are clearly distinct from the artefacts found at the surface of the site. They can be identified as projectile or armature elements, including the unretouched parts (11/17)

🏹The use of points with oblique or transverse distal cutting edges suggests that one of the main lethal properties sought was to slash and cause blood loss. Their presence inside the volume of the bodies and embedded in the bones indicates their efficiency at penetrating (12/17)

🏝️🌊The level of interpersonal violence documented at Jebel Sahaba might find its origin in the drastic environmental changes in the Nile Valley that occurred between the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (20kya) and the stabilization of the African Humid Period (~15-11kya) (13/17)

⏱️🦴New direct radiocarbon dates on bioapatite of several individuals from Jebel Sahaba confirmed the Late Pleistocene age of the cemetery between 13 400 and 18 600 year ago, one of the oldest in the world (14/17)

⚔️The density of archaeological sites/human occupations in the Nile valley at that time, the cultural differences identified, probably associated to diverse semi-residential groups, and the environmental instabilities were probably fertile soil for the rise of conflicts (15/17)

🥇Finally, this study is the perfect example of successful slow science process, it took us 6 years to achieve the reassessment of thousands of bones, a pandemic to write the paper, and lots of chocolates and beers to keep on going … 🍻 to my Dear co-authors (16/17)

Thank you also to @CNRS @INEE_CNRS @AgenceRecherche @univbordeaux @UTJeanJaures @britishmuseum @mshstoulouse @Musee_Homme @PACEA_Bordeaux @umr5608_traces for their supports (17/17)