New light from Oued Beht, Morocco, on the later prehistory of Mediterranean Africa
Event: BIEA Research and Policy Series
Registration
- In-person: https://biea.ac.uk/events/biea-research-and-policy-series/in-person_attendance
- Online: https://biea.ac.uk/events/biea-research-and-policy-series/online_attendance
Speaker: Prof. Cyprian Broodbank, Disney Professor of Archaeology, Director, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Fellow of the British Academy
Discussant: Dr. Freda Nkirote, Honorary Research Associate, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
The later prehistory of Mediterranean Africa west of Egypt has long been a blind-spot in both wider African and Mediterranean archaeology. This is especially true of the last few millennia BCE, prior to Phoenician and Greek activity, when it appears at odds with the rich evidence for dramatic social changes elsewhere. Recent analyses highlight the potential internal dynamism of this region’s trajectories over this time-span. Particularly promising is the northwestern Maghreb. New fieldwork by a collaborative international team at the Moroccan site of Oued Beht has now identified a complex agriculturally-based society that flourished there between ca. 3400 and 2900 BC, with indications of close contacts with Spain and the Sahara. Many aspects of the site’s interpretation remain provisional and subject to ongoing fieldwork and analysis, but already the outline of a new Maghrebian later prehistory can be advocated, with broader significance for long-term dynamics in Africa.
Cyprian Broodbank is Disney Professor of Archaeology and Director of the McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge. He is also Vice President of the British Academy for the UK’s nine British International Research Institutes. He has conducted fieldwork in and around the Mediterranean for four decades, and has written extensively on Aegean and wider Mediterranean archaeology, as well as the comparative archaeology of islands. His Book The Making of the Middle Sea has recently been republished in a revised edition.
The presentation is co-authored by with the other co-directors of the Oued Beht Archaeological Project in Morocco, Giulio Lucarini and Youssef Bokbot.
