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The excavation at al-Khiday's Mesolithic and Neolithic sites, located along the western bank of the White Nile, 25 km south of Khartoum, provides a complex view of hunter-gatherer-fisher pottery-bearing communities inhabiting this region of Sudan during the early and middle Holocene. Their state of preservation, combined with special attention to site formation processes and a multidisciplinary approach to excavation and recording methods, has identified a settlement evolving from an ephemeral occupation into a village in which spaces were organised with different structures suggesting diversified functions and activities. Combined palaeoenvironmental, archaeological and bio-archaeological studies allow reconstruction of the transition from residential mobility to a nearly sedentary lifestyle and, in the later phase, a return to more mobile strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the major contributions provided over fifty years ago by A.J. Arkell and J.D. Tothill to our understanding of late Quaternary environments and prehistoric occupation near the confluence of the Blue and White Nile in central Sudan, three key questions have remained unresolved since then. (a) Was the decline in Nile flood levels from early Holocene times onwards caused by a reduction in Nile discharge, or by channel incision, or both? (b) Was the regional climate wetter during times of high Nile floods and drier during times of low Nile floods? (c) Given the high degree of disturbance of Mesolithic and later prehistoric sites, is it possible to identify primary-context, stratified and undisturbed occupation? Drawing upon dated evidence from three sites to the east of and three to the west of the lower White Nile, we provide a qualified answer to the first question and documented affirmative answers to the second and third questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Pottery from Al Khiday (Khartoum, Sudan), where a number of sites with well-preserved stratified archaeological sequences have been excavated and radiometrically dated to the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods (7000–4000 calibrated BC), was archaeometrically analysed with the main aim of quantifying the textural parameters of the inclusions in the ceramic pastes. A set of 360 samples was studied, and quantitative and qualitative information was obtained regarding paste production recipes and the raw materials used over time. Three main petrographic groups were identified, according to contents in alkali-feldspar and quartz, and the grain-size of quartz inclusions. Further sub-groups were defined and described in terms of grain-size distribution and abundance of the various types of inclusions. Digital image analysis on both scanning electron back-scattered images and elemental maps enabled validation of petrographic groups by quantitative description of the type, abundance and shape of inclusions, and the inclusion-to-matrix ratio. Correlations among the paste production recipes and decorative motifs revealed changes in production technology over time. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]