Teething problems in cereal cultivation in prehistoric Egypt: a restudy of Fayum Neolithic sickle blades

Abstract

This paper discusses the beginning and development of cereal cultivation in the Fayum Neolithic of northern Egypt by restudying flint sickle blades, which were found and poorly published by the British archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson in the early twentieth century and are presently stored in the British Museum, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London, the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The restudy of various sickle blades in the Fayum Neolithic suggests that they derived from those in the Pottery Neolithic of the southern Levant and evolved in the Fayum according to local conditions and needs. It also suggests that the diffusion of cereal cultivation to the Fayum probably took place earlier than previously thought.