North Africa’s role in Mediterranean prehistory

Archaeological fieldwork in Morocco has discovered the earliest previously unknown farming society from a poorly understood period of northwest African prehistory.

This study, published today in Antiquity, reveals for the first time the importance of the Maghreb (northwest Africa) in the emergence of complex societies in the wider Mediterranean.

With a Mediterranean environment, a border with the Sahara desert and the shortest maritime crossing between Africa and Europe, the Maghreb is perfectly located as a hub for major cultural developments and intercontinental connections in the past.

While the region’s importance during the Paleolithic, Iron Age and Islamic periods is well known, there is a significant gap in knowledge of the archaeology of the Maghreb between c. 4000 and 1000 BC, a period of dynamic change across much of the Mediterranean.

To tackle this, Youssef Bokbot (INSAP), Cyprian Broodbank (Cambridge University), and Giulio Lucarini (CNR-ISPC and ISMEO) have carried out collaborative, multidisciplinary archaeological fieldwork at Oued Beht, Morocco.

Prof. Broodbank states, “For over thirty years I have been convinced that Mediterranean archaeology has been missing something fundamental in later prehistoric north Africa. Now, at last, we know that was right, and we can begin to think in new ways that acknowledge the dynamic contribution of Africans to the emergence and interactions of early Mediterranean societies.”

As the authors state, “For more than a century, the last great unknown of later Mediterranean prehistory has been the role played by the societies of Mediterranean’s southern Africa shores west of Egypt. Our discoveries prove that this gap has been due not to any lack of major prehistoric activity, but to the relative lack of investigation and publishing. Oued Beht now affirms the central role of the Maghreb in the emergence of both Mediterranean and wider African societies.”

These results reveal that the site was the largest agricultural complex from this period in Africa outside of the Nile region. All the evidence points to the presence of a large-scale farming settlement—similar in size to Early Bronze Age Troy.

The team recovered unprecedented domesticated plant and animal remains, pottery and lithics, all dating to the Final Neolithic period. Excavation also revealed extensive evidence for deep storage pits.

Importantly, contemporaneous sites with similar pits have been found on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar in Iberia, where finds of ivory and ostrich eggs have long pointed to African connections. This suggests that the Maghreb was instrumental in wider western Mediterranean developments during the fourth millennium BC.

Oued Beht and the northwest Maghreb were clearly integral parts of the wider Mediterranean region. As such, these discoveries significantly change our understanding of the later prehistory of the Mediterranean and Africa.

As the authors of the Antiquity article state, “It is crucial to consider Oued Beht within a wider co-evolving and connective framework embracing peoples on both sides of the Mediterranean-Atlantic gateway during the later fourth and third millennia BC—and, for all the likelihood of movement in both directions, to recognize it as a distinctively African-based community that contributed substantially to the shaping of that social world.”