Reconsidering the emergence of social complexity in early Saharan pastoral societies, 5000 - 2500 B.C.

Debates on the subject of cultural complexity and its material manifestations are situated at the centre of research on prehistoric pastoralism in North Africa. Employing already published databases, this article integrates raw data from archaeological sites across the Sahara with ethnography to generate a framework of analysis in which changes in material culture can be interpreted. It attempts to establish a relationship between the analysis of human and cattle remains in order to study (a) the relations between modes of interment of animals and of humans, and social changes, and (b) the processes responsible for the appearance of a symbolism of power in the mid- and late Holocene funerary rituals. Their integration with landscape systems results in a conclusion of complex patterns of cultural diversity which question previous dismissals of early Saharan pastoral-is is as the progenitors of social complexity.