Mid-Holocene bifacial tradition evidenced in Augila Oasis, Cyrenaica, Libya

This article considers three lithic artefacts (two sidescrapers and a gouge or plane) discovered at Augila Oasis, located in Cyrenaica along the dried riverbed of Wadi Nashoof and once directly in the line of the Western Desert trade and pilgrimage route. The three Augila tools belong to the so-called bifacial tradition, which spread in the eastern Sahara during the mid-Holocene, from c. 6000 to 4800 BC, and find parallels among the mid-Holocene production of the northern edge of the Farafra Oasis and other contexts of the Egyptian Western Desert. The presence of the bifacial tradition in the Lower Nile Valley and in the Libyan littoral could have unfolded through exchange networks during periods of favourable climatic condition in the mid-Holocene.