Cultural taxonomic systems and the Late Palaeolithic/Later Stone Age prehistory of the Nile Valley – a critical review

Research on the prehistory of the Nile Valley has a long history dating back to the late 19th century. But it is only between the 1960s and 1980s, that numerous cultural entities were defined based on tool and core typologies; this habit stopped after the 1980s when the region saw an interruption of research on the later Palaeolithic periods. Many of the cultural entities of the later prehistory in the Nile Valley (Late Palaeolithic [LP]) were defined based on different types of cores, backed pieces and truncations. These types often relied on subjective shape criteria, using a non-standardised vocabulary, making comparisons with new material or recent reanalysis of older assemblages difficult. In the Nile Valley, some LP assemblages have been recently re-analysed but factors of lithic variability in the LP remain poorly understood and may be clouded by the use of a too rigid taxonomic cultural system. This study aims to explore the influence of the definitions of cultural entities on current research and the consistency of their definitions, in order to maximise comparability between previous and recent research data.