The Lakeshore Cemetery at Gobero: A Cross Cultural Comparison with Saharan Holocene Hunter-Gatherers

Perceptions about hunter gatherer societies are usually coupled with associations of simplistic cultural traditions. This is most likely due to the migratory nature of hunter gatherers and the relative lack of evidence they leave in the Archaeological record. As with Aboriginal Australian cultures, it has been shown that other hunter gatherer groups establish strong connection to localised spaces and develop complex mortuary rituals in association with the land they inhabit.

Grave goods from Gobero. Image credit: projectexploration.org

The inhabitants of Gobero, a site at the edge of a paleolake in modern Niger were able to subsist in a climate almost identical to that of Holocene Australia. Further, the humans living at Gobero practiced a similar form of sedentary hunter-gatherer living to Australian Aborigines. The people living at Gobero ate a diet “based on clams, fish, and savanna vertebrates” (Sereno et al. 2008) much akin to the available foodstuffs in the Murray-Darling River Basin (O'Neill 1994). Gobero is the site of the oldest recorded cemetery in the Sahara, dating from 9700-8200 BP (Sereno et al. 2008). More than 200 individuals have been found in the cemetery here, attesting to the prolonged habitation and continuous use of space a hunter gatherer lifestyle is not typically identified with. The individuals were buried on the banks of what was at the time a lakeshore in dunes just like the dune cemeteries found on the banks of the River Murray region (Pardoe 1988). While the inhabitants of the Holocene Sahara and Australian continent were undoubtedly very different in cultural tradition, the similarities in lifestyle and burial positioning within the landscape provide an interesting comparison with each other. Along with the Murray River sites, Gobero proves that non agricultural societies were capable of creating complex mortuary practices in association with particular spaces in continual use.

Image credit: Google Maps

Aerial view of Gobero excavation site. Image credit: Wikipedia