Archaic art of northern Africa

Saharan rock art

Bubalus Period (end of 6th - mid-4th millenium)

	1. The Sahara Desert includes significant mountain ranges, such as the Tassili N'Ajjer shown here. Before the dessication of North Africa, this was the home fishermen, hunters and herdsmen in great numbers, and their diffusion as the desert became inhospitable had a significant effect upon the emergence of Ancient Kemet (Egypt), the states to the West where savannah met forest, and the Mediterranean coast to the North.
	2. At one time the Sahara was fairly moist, and it was populated from the time of human origins. Thirty thousand rock paintings and engravings in all mountainous areas are known, half from Tassili in Algeria. Initially periodization was based on the animals represented in the engravings (although painting and engraving may need to be considered entirely separately if the engravings were done by Libyo-Berber Afroasiatic peoples and the paintings by darker peoples from the south). The earliest phase is called the Bubalus Period, for the art shows animals that became extinct in the area, including the buffalo (Bubalus antiquus), elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. The animals are naturalistic and often on a large scale. Men are armed with clubs, throwing sticks, axes and bows, but never spears. Then, in the Cattle Period, the appearance of rams and cattle suggests the beginning of a herding economy. Most of these paintings seem to be intermediate between the Bubalus and Cattle Periods. This example is a faceless (aniconic) figure from T'in Teferiest, Tassili. The smaller dark figures may have been painted at a different time than the large figure. These faceless paintings are found in shelters without the pottery or grindstones associated with the Cattle Period, and so may be contemporary with the Bubalus work. Some round headed figure painting from the Uan Telocat in the Acacus has been reported to be older than c. 4800 B.C.
	3. This engraving of an elephant is from Bardai, in the eastern Sahara, and it belongs to either the Bubalus or the Cattle Period. Height 7-8". The archaeological data is difficult to correlate with the art work, but human occupation at Tassili started at least around 5500 B.C., and it is assumed that the Bubalus Period began not long thereafter and lasted to ca. 3500 B.C.

Cattle Period (mid-4th to mid-2nd millenium B.C.)

	1. People hunted game first with crude stone axes and throwing sticks and now with bows and javelins. The Cattle or Pastoralist Period, following the Bubalus Period, no longer displays the buffalo, but still the other wild animals and now especially cattle. The style less naturalistic and sketchier; the pose is stiffer; horns are sometimes in a frontal perspective; size is smaller. This painting from the Cattle Period shows herdsmen and cattle at Tin Tazazarift, Tassili. The cow in the foreground has a collar and a forked object in its mouth. Figures are 6-14" in height. Radiocarbon dates suggest the Cattle Period was mid-fourth to perhaps mid-second millenium B.C., but this remains very uncertain. The Cattle Period reflects a fully pastoral economy, and it is associated with pottery, polished stone axes, grindstones and arrowheads, and the bones of domesticated cattle, sheep and goats.
	2. This cave painting in the Tassili N'Ajjers Plateau, shows an archer with bow and arrows. The figure style is archaic, and the use of bow and arrows suggests Cattle Period.
	3. Pastoralism, in the form of domesticated sheep and goats, spread from the Sahara to Cyrinaica and Khartoum in the early fifth millenium. The domestication of the local wild Bos africanus cattle probably also originated in the Sahara, in the fourth millenium. The economic shift to cattle herding was accompanied by a change in settlement patterns, with settlements extending far out into the plain, such as this site at Adrar Bouis in the Tenere desert. The three stone circles were possibly the foundations of storage bins. Evidence suggest such villages covered a considerable large area and supported a large population, but building materials were insubstantial and left little trace.

Horse Period (from ca 1200 B.C.)

1. The periodization based on content suggests a Horse Period following the Cattle Period. The horse seems to have been introduced by the Sea Peoples in about 1200 B.C., and with the horse came Cretan influence. The Sea People from Crete came as allies of the Lybians of Cyrenaica against Egypt. The Horse period is subdivided into a Chariot, Horseman, and Horse-and-Camel sub-periods. The art suggests that the desert pastoralists themselves never got their hands on chariots. The dessication of the Sahara ended the use of chariots, but people continued to use the horse as a mount. The camel may have been introduced in about 700 B.C., but it took a long time to become generalized in Roman times. The suceeding Camel Period extends from Roman times to the present. This small painting of a camel is from the late period of Tassili art. The Camel Period represents contemporary animals of the Sahara: antelopes, oryx, gazelles, moufflons, ostrich, humped cattle (zebu) and goats, and, of course, the camel. The art of the period is small and highly schematic; the human is represented by a double triangle; the weapon is the spear, although later there is also the sword and firearm.

2. A masked dancer at Inaouanrhat, Tassili. Height 31". The people of the Sahara apparently influenced the cultures of both the Nile valley and of West Africa, and one suspects the use of masks is one such link. However, there is no stylistic similarity between the masks in Tassili art and those of West Africa.

The Tazina Style of Algeria-Morocco

Rock art

1. Rock art from Tazzarine Oasis, South Morocco, in the Tazina Style (Algerian type-site). The art of this hunting society typically shows graceful animals, roughly a foot tall, carved with polished (vs. pecked) lines. Here are gazelles. The art seems be the product of hunters and herders fleeing Sahara dessication. While many sites between Algeria and the Atlantic show the Tazina style, there emerges another style consisting of pecked designs of the domesticated ox as well as wild animals, as the economy shifts from hunting to herding.