Iberomaurusian

The Iberomaurusian is a backed bladelet lithic industry found near the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It is also known from a single major site in Libya, the Haua Fteah, where the industry is locally known as the Eastern Oranian.[note 1] The Iberomaurusian seems to have appeared around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), somewhere between c. 25,000 and 22,500 cal BP. It would have lasted until the early Holocene c. 11,000 cal BP.[1]

Iberomaurusian

Geographical range	Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya (not shown on map).
Period	Later Stone Age, Epipalaeolithic, or Upper Paleolithic
Dates	c. 25/23,000 – c. 11,000 cal BP
Type site	La Mouillah
Major sites	Taforalt, Ifri N'Ammar, Afalou, Tamar Hat, Taza, Ouchtata
Preceded by	Aterian
Followed by	Mushabian, Cardium pottery, Capsian

The name of the Iberomaurusian means "of Iberia and Mauritania". Pallary (1909) coined this term[2] to describe assemblages from the site of La Mouillah in the belief that the industry extended over the strait of Gibraltar into the Iberian peninsula. This theory is now generally discounted (Garrod 1938),[3] but the name has stuck.

In Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, but not in Morocco, the industry is succeeded by the Capsian industry, whose origins are unclear. The Capsian is believed either to have spread into North Africa from the Near East,[4] or to have evolved from the Iberomaurusian.[5][6] In Morocco and Western Algeria, the Iberomaurusian is succeeded by the Cardial culture after a long hiatus.[7]

Definition

Mr. Luis Siret had already noticed in Southeastern Spain a Palaeolithic industry that included a microlithic toolkit: small and narrow instruments, variously retouched and with these, colouring substances, grinding tools, and hammerstones. However, this very industry, we have noticed it in the La Mouillah shelters, close to Marnia [western Algeria]: it includes hammerstones, cores, simple and backed [à bord retaillés] blades, notched blades, an excessive profusion of very small blades with retouch on their backs and very sharp points [très petites lames à dos retouché et à pointe très aigüe [sic]], circular endscrapers, disks, alterative flake pebbles, and a whole set of tools for grinding colours: pebbles in greenish rock, sandstone wheels, pebbles with median depressions, still impregnated with red colour, and as colouring substances, hematites, ocre, oligist iron. Finally, some boring tools in polished bone and objects of adornment: ellongated pebbles and shells pierced for suspension. But nothing in the way of polished stone or pottery.

[...]

What clearly distinguishes this industry is the smallness of the toolkit, especially the crescent-shaped backed blades of which one finds thousands of examples. True geometric pieces (in the shape of trapeziums) are excessively rare, barely three parts per thousand, whereas in the ancient Neolithic with pottery and polished stone, small pieces of flint with geometric shapes are very common.

I named Ibero-Maurusian the period that characterises this industry.

— Paul Pallary, Instructions pour les recherches préhistoriques dans le nord-ouest de l'Afrique (1909, pp. 45-46, translation)

Alternative names

Because the name of the Iberomaurusian implies Afro-European cultural contact now generally discounted,[3] researchers have proposed other names:

• Mouillian or Mouillan, based on the site of La Mouillah (Goetz 1945-6).
• The Oranian, based on the Algerian region of Oran (Breuil 1930, Gobert et al. 1932, McBurney 1967, Barker et al. 2012).
• The Epipalaeolithic (Roche 1963).
• The Late Upper Palaeolithic (of Northwest African facies, Barton et al. 2005).

Timeline of sites

What follows is a timeline of all published radiocarbon dates from reliably Iberomaurusian contexts, excluding a number of dates produced in the 1960s and 1970s considered "highly doubtful" (Barton et al. 2013). All dates, calibrated and Before Present, are according to Hogue and Barton (2016). The Tamar Hat date beyond 25,000 cal BP is tentative.

Genetics

In 2013, Iberomaurusian skeletons from the prehistoric sites of Taforalt and Afalou were analyzed for ancient DNA. All of the specimens belonged to maternal clades associated with either North Africa or the northern and southern Mediterranean littoral, indicating gene flow between these areas since the Epipaleolithic.[8] The ancient Taforalt individuals carried the mtDNA Haplogroup N subclades like U6 and M which points to population continuity in the region dating from the Iberomaurusian period.[9][10]

Loosdrecht et al. (2018) analysed genome-wide data from seven ancient individuals from the Iberomaurusian Grotte des Pigeons site near Taforalt in north-eastern Morocco. The fossils were directly dated to between 15,100 and 13,900 calibrated years before present. The scientists found that all males belonged to haplogroup E1b1b, common among Afroasiatic males. The male specimens with sufficient nuclear DNA preservation belonged to the paternal haplogroup E1b1b1a1 (M78), with one skeleton bearing the E1b1b1a1b1 parent lineage to E-V13, one male specimen belonged to E1b1b (M215*). These Y-DNA clades 24,000[11] years BP had a common ancestor with the Berbers and the E1b1b1b (M123) subhaplogroup that has been observed in skeletal remains belonging to the Epipaleolithic Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures of the Levant. Maternally, the Taforalt remains bore the U6a and M1b mtDNA haplogroups, which are common among modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations in Africa. A two-way admixture scenario using Natufian and modern sub-Saharan samples (including West Africans and the Tanzanian Hadza) as reference populations inferred that the seven Taforalt individuals are best modeled genetically as of 63.5% Natufian-related and 36.5% sub-Saharan ancestry (with the latter having both West African-like and Hadza-like affinities), with no apparent gene flow from the Epigravettian culture of Paleolithic southern Europe. The scientists indicated that further ancient DNA testing at other Iberomaurusian archaeological sites would be necessary to determine whether the Taforalt samples were representative of the broader Iberomaurusian gene pool.[12]

See also

• Afroasiatic Urheimat
• Aterian
• Mushabian
• Taforalt
• Ifri N'Ammar
• Mechta-Afalou
• Haua Fteah

Notes

1. The "Western Oranian" would refer to the Iberomaurusian in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, but this expression is seldom used.

References

1. Hogue, J.T.; Barton, R.N.E. (2016-08-22). "New radiocarbon dates for the earliest Later Stone Age microlithic technology in Northwest Africa". Quaternary International. 413: 62–75. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.11.144. ISSN 1040-6182.
2. Pallary, P., 1909. Instructions pour la recherche préhistorique dans le Nord-Ouest de l'Afrique, Algiers.
3. D.A.E Garrod (1938). "The Upper Palaeolithic in the light of recent discovery". Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 4 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1017/S0079497X00021113.
4. Camps, G., 1974. Les Civilisations Préhistoriques de l'Afrique du Nord et du Sahara, Paris: Doin
5. Lubell, D., Sheppard, P. & Jackes, M., 1984. Continuity in the Epipalaeolithic of North Africa with Emphasis on the Maghreb. Advances in World Archaeology, 3, pp.143–191
6. Irish, J.D., 2000. The Iberomaurusian enigma: North African progenitor or dead end? Journal of Human Evolution, 39(4), pp.393–410
7. mankind, International Commission for a History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind History of; Mankind, International Commission for the New Edition of the History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of (1994). History of Humanity: Prehistory and the beginnings of civilization. Taylor & Francis. p. 514. ISBN 9789231028106.
8. Kefi R, Bouzaid E, Stevanovitch A, Beraud-Colomb E. "MITOCHONDRIAL DNA AND PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS OF PREHISTORIC NORTH AFRICAN POPULATIONS" (PDF). ISABS. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 March 2016. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
9. Bernard Secher; Rosa Fregel; José M Larruga; Vicente M Cabrera; Phillip Endicott; José J Pestano & Ana M González (2014). "The history of the North African mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U6 gene flow into the African, Eurasian and American continents". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 14: 109. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-14-109. PMC 4062890. PMID 24885141.
10. Kefi, Rym; Hechmi, Meriem; Naouali, Chokri; Jmel, Haifa; Hsouna, Sana; Bouzaid, Eric; Abdelhak, Sonia; Beraud-Colomb, Eliane; Stevanovitch, Alain (2 January 2018). "On the origin of Iberomaurusians: new data based on ancient mitochondrial DNA and phylogenetic analysis of Afalou and Taforalt populations". Mitochondrial DNA Part A. 29 (1): 147–157. doi:10.1080/24701394.2016.1258406. PMID 28034339.
11. https://yfull.com/tree/E-M35/
12. van de Loosdrecht; et al. (2018-03-15). "Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations". Science. 360 (6388): 548–552. doi:10.1126/science.aar8380. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 29545507.