المستخلص: |
This paper investigates the aspects of pastoral economy and the development of the social structures during the Neolithic and beyond. Social differentiation appeared among Sudanese herders by the 6th millennium BP. Clusters of especially rich graves of men, women, and children at many Neolithic sites argue for differences in wealth, but there is no evidence for social stratification. Pastoral intensification and a decrease in wild animal use are also evident at some sites in the Middle Nile after 5300 BP. However, whatever this social organization might have been, it should have left some material manifestations of its structure. The increasing importance of domesticated animals, for example, would be associated with the emergence of more individualized rights and responsibilities in economic management and this was assumed to have led to increased differentiation within such communities. It is clear that the social structure in the Sudan during the Neolithic period exhibited more or less inseparable economic and settlement patterns which are in turn witness to developmental stages extending from the Early Neolithic to the complex picture of the Bronze Age.
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