R12 is a middle Neolithic cemetery located in the Northern Dongola Reach on the banks of the Seleim Nile palaeochannel of modern-day Sudan. The site is dated to between 5000 and 4000 BC. Centro Veneto di Studi Classici e Orientali excavated the site, within the concession of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society and after an agreement with it, between 2000 and 2003 over three digging seasons. The first was in 2000, and 33 graves were discovered. The second was in 2001, and another 33 graves were discovered. The third was in 2003, and the last 100 graves were discovered. There are 166 graves total at the site. Contents of the graves include ceramics, animal bones, grinding stones, human skeletons, and plant remains.
Excavation The R12 cemetery is held within a mound-like formation spanning 1400m2. The mound is 2.9 meters above the surface of the plain. The cemetery within the mound has an area of about 650m2. The mound is a layer of Nile silt on top of an irregular sandy deposit. Underneath these two layers is a regularly deposited silt layer. Over the past 7000 years, wind and water have eroded the mound causing it to have the morphology that it did before excavation. Because some of this wind and water eroded the lower part of the mound, some skeletal remains and artifacts breached the body of the mound. These processes of erosion did not affect the graves in the top of the mound. This made them easily detectable as compared to the graves at the lower part.
Grave contents Some of the graves have filled with gravel or stones from processes of erosion. The graves were dug through the upper silt layer. Mud was placed on the walls of the grave to prevent falling sand. After the person was placed in the grave, they filled the grave with silt or small pebbles. The people buried in the graves were usually placed on their left side. Direction of the body was aligned with the cardinal directions. It appears that when new graves were dug, they cut into older graves. The graves often contained pottery, tools, bone spatulas, mammal bone perforators. Bodies were adorned with ivory bracelets, stone and ivory bangles, stone necklaces, lip plugs, and stone pendants. Graves also contained pebbles, beads, and marine shells. Children were buried with furniture or distinctive signs of family. These children seem to have had the same treatment as adults. This is a sign that status is attributed at birth.
Pottery Ninety-five percent of the graves at R12 contain pottery. There are between one and nine pottery vessels in any given grave. At least 220 pottery vessels were found in total. Most of the pottery is made from fine sand temper and fired in an earthen kiln. Sometimes, the fine sand temper pottery contains mica. Other materials that the pottery could be partially made from are chaff, limestone splinters, and shells. The pottery was decorated and then smoothed and polished. Some of the pottery had stripes and was so polished that it gained a metallic brightness. Red or black spots were found on some of the pottery. This was caused by oxidation or reduction processes. There is evidence that the pottery was not made for only funerary purposes. Many of the pots show signs of prolonged use over fire which shows that they were used many times before being placed in the graves. When a grave has more than one pot, they have similar or identical decorations. It is possible that this signifies that a certain group of people or family is associated with a decorative motif.
Bowls Most of the pottery found are bowls. These bowls were mainly hemispherical and were either restricted (47%) or unrestricted (32.5%). A distinctive type of bowl at R12 is a composite contour bowl with a carinated profile with the upper body going from straight to concave. The bowls ranged from a height of 2 cm to over 14 cm. The bowls found in Period 1 of R12 are composite with a sinuous profile. These bowls also have a complex decorated motif of dot impressions. Bowls with a rising lug handle, small bowls with depressions on the rim, and small colanders were only found in children's graves.
Jars Another form of pottery found are jars (12.5%). They range in shape from ovoid to globular. The jars ranged from a height of 10 cm to over 40 cm. A jar with covered with ochre powder and a complex dot decoration was found.
Caliciform beakers A third form of pottery found at R12 are caliciform beakers (8%). Sixteen complete beakers were found along with several fragments. Four different types of caliciform beakers were found at R12. The first type is decorated with wide horizontal bands. These bands are either dotted or are incised lines separated by undecorated bands. The internal rims had chains of hatched triangles. These caliciform beakers were between 20.6 cm and 33 cm in height. The second type is decorated with hatched, oblique, regularly spaced bands covering the entire beaker. The rims are rounded on the inside and slightly flared out. The rims are decorated with clusters of dotted parallel lines. The third group of beakers have the same geometric pattern, rounded rim, rim decoration, and are between 18.4 cm and 21.5 cm tall. The fourth group of beakers are generally squat in shape and have thin horizontal bands with hatched dotted lines and rounded rims. The surface of the beakers are purposely imprecise, making the beakers seem less elegant than the other groups of beakers.
Jewelry Most of the jewelry found at R12 are bead bracelets, necklaces, and stone pendants. There are also a few examples of stone bracelets and ear or lip plugs. Jewelry is present in 21.69% of the graves at R12. Jewelry was found in 11 male graves, 9 female graves, and 14 child graves. Jewelry is absent in graves of people over the age of 50. This could suggest that jewelry was only available to a certain group within the population.
Grave 92 included a bead-belt. Grave 60 contained a person wearing headband made out of ostrich eggshell beads.
Thirteen bead blanks were found inside a shell in Grave 38. They were made from agate and quartz flakes reduced to a cylindrical shape. After this, they were polished and perforated. This grave was also home to the only in situ perforator found at R12, bone beads in various stages of production, thousands of ostrich eggshell beads, several pendants, and sandstone palettes. This particularly rich assemblage suggests this person may have been an artisan who specialized in the production of stone jewelry, with the perforator and palettes as their tools.
Other beads were made from ochre, amazonite, or ostrich eggshells. Amazonite beads were made into a teardrop shape. It seems that all beads buried in R12 graves were constructed by the same people that utilized the cemetery. Ochre beads had the most specialized production because they are the most regular in measurement.
Bracelets and necklaces Fifteen bracelets were found at R12 across a total of nine graves. Forty necklaces were found at R12 across a total of 39 graves. Similar necklaces have been found at other Neolithic cemeteries in Nubia and Sudan. These bracelets and necklaces were made from various types of beads.
Stone jewelry Pendants, bangles, and lip/ear plugs are the common forms of stone jewelry found at R12. The stone pendants were made of small elongated pebbles of agate, carnelian, quartz, white and variegated stones. Sometimes the pendants were used as bracelets. Similar pendants are found in other Neolithic cemeteries in Sudan and Nubia. Stone bangles are made from a white stone that has not been identified. They were worn on the upper arm. There are no other objects like them found in any other Neolithic cemetery and there is no evidence for how they were made. Three lip plugs and one possible ear plug were found at R12. The three lip plugs are made of zeolite and are angular with a conical extremity. They were found in two separate graves. The third lip plug was found on the surface. Grave 18 possibly had an ear plug. In general, lip and ear plugs are common in other Neolithic cemeteries in Sudan and Nubia. There is no evidence for how the ear and lip plugs were made.
Lithic tools 539 lithic tools and pieces were found from a total of 48 graves at R12. These tools and pieces are flakes, blades, cores, and debris. Because of the overabundance of flakes in the distribution, it can be assumed that the production was for flakes and blades were occasional byproducts. The most common material found in the graves is flint possibly taken from a nearby gravel deposit containing quartz, agate, carnelian, and chert.
Debitage Most of the debitage consists of flakes as a result of being struck by a hard-hammer. Not all of the debitage were complete. A majority of these flakes came from single-platform cores. There are also flakes from opposed-platform and multi-platform cores. Primary flakes are underrepresented which is strange because they are the first step of core flaking. Half of the debitage are flakes that still have part of the cortex. Most of the blades are single-platform core blades with flat butts. The lengths and widths of the flakes were distributed regularly meaning that the production of the flakes reached standardization. However, there is no evidence for any specific core preparation technique.
Cores There were a total of 51 cores recorded at the R12 site. Most of the 51 cores are made of flint from Nile pebbles. They were also made from quartz, agate, and one core from flint not from Nile pebbles. Three of the cores show blade scars. The others are flake cores. Some of the cores are found with their original debitage. Most core are single-platform which could be because they are less elaborate than multi-platform cores and thus easier to make. Sixteen of the thirty six single-platform cores are made of quartz. This is notable because quartz does not flake well. Nine of the cores are multi-platform cores. Multi-platform cores have more use than single-platform cores.
Tools 135 tools were found at R12. Most of the tools were made of flint from Nile pebbles. Geometrics were the most common tool type found and are made from the finest raw materials. Backed pieces were the second most common tool type found followed by end-scrapers, perforators, notches/denticulates, and varia. The only type of geometric tool found are lunates. In some instances, the difference between lunates and backed pieces was ambiguous. The backed pieces found at R12 are different than other Northern African backed pieces in that they are not made on blades and are not elongated. Four scraper tools were found. Two perforators were found. Four notch/denticulates were found.
Ritual and social context Because the differing tools found at R12 is smaller than the actual amount of tools created by the people of R12, archaeologists can only make hypotheses about what the people were doing. It is also hard to tell which tools the people of R12 created and which tools were accumulated through trade. Even though the pottery at R12 shows change over the 600 active site years, the lithic assemblage does not. Most of the lithics seem to have been created for burial as they do not show signs of wear. Male and female graves contained lithics at significant percentages. This could mean that there was a somewhat equal division of labor.
Grave 38 is considered the richest grave excavated at R12 and contained an adult male buried with the set of bead blanks discussed previously, bone tools, three large bowls, a small jar, and 87 lithic pieces, making this grave have the largest amount of lithics. He also was wearing a bracelet made from pebbles and a necklace made from carnelian, agate, amazonite, and shell beads. The presence of lithics and other artifacts in this grave could represent wealth in terms of quantity and variety of materials.
Other stone tools