Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (16.2004(2005))

FOURTH CATARACT - ULI ISLAND

SUDAN

LATE NEOLITHIC

The Lace Neolithic is also represented on
a few sites, separately or associated with
sherds of an earlier or later tradition (Uli 6,
9, 10, 15, 20, 33, 34, 36, 49).
The sites are settlements in all likeli-
hood, so the pottery assemblage is rather ho-
mogenous. The fabric is better sorted and
features a smaller fraction of mineral inclu-
sions than in earlier examples, but it is still
a quartz- and mica-rich temper. Fragmen-
tariness is again an issue for shape re-
construction. It seems, nonetheless, that the
most popular shape was a fairly large open
bowl. Small bowls were extremely rare.
Vessels were rather thin walled; good
quality examples with walls about 0.5 cm
thick are seldom encountered.

The predominant colors of the clay of
this pottery were red, brown, gray or black.
Surfaces were smoothed inside and out or
had simple burnishing outside. Rims were
simple, eiyher rounded or plain, very often
decorated on top with incised lines: short
straight or oblique, cross-hatched, sometimes
zigzag [Fig. 2], The exterior body surface
was usually undecorated, rare exceptions
including a continuous zigzag pattern
[Fig. 2:4} and two instances of impressed
parallel dots in bands [Fig. 2:2], which
could be the pattern on a typical beaker
frequent in the Neolithic grave inventory.4
In one case, there was a band of short incised
oblique lines below the rim [Fig. 2:1] and in
another, a herringbone pattern on the ex-


Fig. 1. Examples of Early Neolithic sherds: 1 - U9-1; 2-5 - U60; 6. U60.5
(Photo A. Ohluski)

358