Provider: Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic TY - JOUR JO - Anthropologie (Brno) TI - The Middle Paleolithic of Southern Bahariya Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt AU - Svoboda JA Y1 - 2004 VL - 42 IS - 3 PB - Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic SN - 0323-1119 SP - 227 EP - 241 KW - Middle Paleolithic KW - Cummulative settlements KW - Lithic workshops KW - Episodic sites KW - Bahariya KW - Egypt N2 - N2 - The georelief of southern Bahariya, shaped from the soft Tertiary sediments interlain by harder rocks, is structured into distinct "floors" and thus offers good potentials for study of Middle Paleolithic settlement strategies. Three aspects are important for location of the sites: secure water resources, lithic raw material outcrops, and positions granting a good overview. Accordingly, several types of Middle Paleolithic sites may be defined: the cummulative settlements at the playas, lithic workshops on the mountains, strategic hunting posts, and individual artifact occurrences. Given the lack of chronological framework of the Bahariyan Middle Paleolithic, the only trend that may be recognized is the development from the bifacial Acheulian handaxes towards the fine leafpoints (the latter associated with Mousterian points and flat-retouched sidescrapers), and probably, a tendency to reduction in size of the cores and flakes. Contrary to the sites in Negev and Cyrenaica, the Middle Paleolithic of northern Egypt shows no trends towards an increased blade production and to Upper Paleolithic technology in general. ER -