Sodmein Cave - Third Field Report - Season 2012

Abstract

The third field season of the joint research project “Sodmein Cave”, conducted by the
German University of Cologne and the Belgian University of Leuven, took place in spring
2012 between the 10th of March and the 15th of April. The field work was carried out under
the aegis of the Collaborative Research Centre 806, which was established in 2009 by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Research Funding Organisation).
During the Late Quaternary the anatomically modern humans (AMH) dispersed
across and out of Africa to eventually populate all inhabitable continents. Knowledge of
palaeoenvironments and human behavioural patterns in Africa prior, during and after these
dispersals is crucial for understanding how and why hunter‐gatherers were able to adapt
rapidly to the new environments they encountered. However, very few well‐dated
archaeological sites from this time period are known from Northeast Africa. Egypt is an
important area en route to the Levant (cf. Wurz & van Peer 2012). As it is bound by the
bottleneck of the Sinai Peninsula connecting Africa and Asia, Egypt provides an exciting
background.
During the first field campaign in 2010 the archaeological excavations in Sodmein
Cave could be resumed as a kind of continuation of the 1990’s activities of the Belgian
Middle Egypt Prehistoric Project (BMEPP). On the contrary, the focus during the second
season was on the analysis of the archaeological material from the former Belgian
excavations in the magazine of Quft. The aim of this 2012 spring campaign concentrated
anew on the archaeological excavations in the cave. The main objectives of this last research
season have been to
- continue the archaeological excavation in the cave,
- document the trenches and the cave with a 3D laser scan and,
- survey the terrace in the nearer surrounding of Sodmein Cave.

Resources

• Report_Sodmein_Cave_SCA_2012.pdf

Bibliography

Kindermann, K., van Peer, P., Bubenzer, O. (2012): Sodmein Cave - Third Field Report - Season 2012. University of Cologne and University of Leuven