Why Uan Afuda? The “pre-pastoral” archaeology of the Acacus and surroundings.

Generally, “pre-pastoral” archaeology in the Saharan regions refers to post-Pleistocene hunter-gatherers that exploited several resources. This “phase” was considered to be a cultural continuum, bringing with it several features, sometimes in contrast with each other. In the same chrono-cultural phase, fishermen exploiting lake and wadi resources, hunters exploiting large and small fauna, foragers intensively harvesting wild cereals and gatherers randomly collecting tubers and other plant resources, woul exist on both small sites and large, residential camps. All this evidence was put together and covered by labels such as “ceramic epipalaeolithic” or “aqualithic cultures”. Conversely, is this evidence to be related to different socio-cultural systems, that is, different forms of human aggregation? In this paper, a review of the “pre-pastoral” evidence, mostly from the Acacus in Libya, but also from the other Saharan massifs, tries to isolate different cultural phases. The discussion of the Uan Afuda Cave, a well preserved archaeological site in the central Acacus, together with results of the regional survey carried out in the surroundings, forms the basis for a new understanding of the human groups who reoccupied mountains and lowlands of the central Sahara at the beginning of the Holocene, after the long hyper-arid Ogoolian late Pleistocene phase.