PALÉORIENT, vol. 15/2-1989

A SURVEY IN THE UPPER WADI FEIRAN BASIN, SOUTHERN SINAI

J.L. PHILLIPS and Br. G. GLADFELTER

several Upper of which many during

archéologiques l'Epipaléolithique bassin marécageuses

Introduction

In 1982, the University of Illinois at Chicago began a survey of the Wadi Feiran basin of southern Sinai (1) (fig. 1). During June and July our reconnaissance of 1,100 km2 of the upper basin located 30 prehistoric sites, half in excavatable contexts, that range from the Middle Paleolithic to the Neolithic. About a dozen Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sites also were discovered. The survey was concerned with locating Neolithic and older sites and with evaluating their geostratigraphical contexts for the purpose of establishing the contemporaneous pa- leoenvironment.

When we began the survey, Quaternary deposits in south Sinai had not been systematically mapped or studied, and previous archaeological surveys or excavations in the region were not concerned with the sedimentary contexts of the artifacts or with geostratigraphic considerations. No substantial work by the Geological Survey of Egypt or others had been attempted on the Quaternary stratigraphy of south Sinai or, consequently, with its relevance to the surviving prehistoric record. Prior to our survey, the "lacustrine" deposits in Wadi Feiran were the only Quaternary series documented in the literature (2) but : the age of these deposits was unknown; the conditions promoting sedimentation were disputed; the geographic distribution was incompletely documented and improperly correlated with other deposits in the area; and the archaeological content of the deposits was not known.

The dearth of paleobotanical material from this area places unusual emphasis on the sedimentary record in any environmental reconstruction. The

"lacustrine" deposits are unique in southern Sinai and, as with the marl deposits at Gebel Maghara in northern Sinai (3), the marl faciès in Wadi Feiran were thought to hold some potential for recovery of Quaternary paleobotanical information. Subsequent investigations have shown that this is not the case. Because the Quaternary history of this region was virtually unknown, a major focus of our preliminary reconnaissance was to assess the extent, nature, and succession of the Quaternary deposits for a contex- tural archaeology.

The geomorphological objectives of the archaeological survey were : 1) to develop an initial reconstruction of the evolution of the landscape in the late Pleistocene and Holocene which would serve as a basis for predicting where artifactual material might be recovered; 2) to assess the sedimentary and geomorphic contexts of the discovered sites in terms of their potential for a paleoenvironmental reconstruction; 3) to decipher the spatial and temporal situations of the "lacustrine" formation in relation to prehistoric occupations of the region; and 4) to determine whether or not the geomorphic and depositional data base was sufficient for reconstructing paleo-hydrologic regimes from which pa- leoclimatic conditions could be inferred.

Recent excavations

Except for recent work by Bar Yosef and his team on terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene sites (4), excavations in southern Sinai have generally been limited to the Chalcolithic and later periods (5). One

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