Coping with aridity in Cyrenaica in MIS 4-2: the evidence of the Haua Fteah
The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, UK
The 1950s excavations by Charles McBurney in the great cave of Haua Fteah on the northern coast of Cyrenaica in eastern Libya yielded one of the most important sequences of Upper Pleistocene hominin occupations in North Africa. New excavations between 2007 and 2015 have established that the initial use of the cave, probably by anatomically modern humans, was in MIS 6, with occupation continuing at different levels of intensity through MIS 5 to 1. The paper discusses the evidence emerging from the excavations for the strategies developed by the occupants of the cave to cope with the increasingly unstable climates of MIS 4-2, especially with the marked aridity that was predominant in MIS 3 and 2.
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