Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-28-2017

Abstract

The Nile Valley between the Second Cataract at Wadl Halfa and the First Cataract at Aswan has been "10, 1902, and the High Dam (Sa'ad cl A'ali). that nundated behind to dams -the Aswan Dam, first Dụ blocked the flow of the Nile in 1964. The antici pated loss of archeological monuments in Lake Nasser, the reservoir behind the High Dam, initiated lational campaign to protect, move, or at least docu- ment as many of those monuments as possible, The UNESCO Campaign ro Salvage the Monuments of Nubia included two projects that undertoak to record the prehistoric archeology of the reservoirl areat each of those projects engaged geologists to help place archeological sites in rigorous stratigraphic contexts. Thus, the Nile Valley between Wadi Halfa and Aswan was the site of an intensive investigation of late-Cenozoic g geologic history. In this paper we summarize the principal stratigraphic elements of the suite of sediments and land- forms that characterize the late-Cenozoic geology af Egyptan Nubia. Those elements include: 1 Early Nile Gravel (ENG), a Nile flood-plain gravel deposited while humans were manufacturing Acheulean artifacts in the Nile Valley. 2. Wadi Conglomerate (WCGL), a wadi-floor gravel topographically inverted to form sinuous ridges in the time after deposition of ÈNG. Because of the deep incision of the Nile Valley and immediately adjacent tributary wadis, the errain close to the Nilc, within the Reservoir area, preserves multiple generations of wadi inversion, a complex morphostratigraphic sequence not described from other areas in Egypt. The oldest body of WCGL was deposited at che same time as the ÈNG was accumulating. 3. Late Nile Sediments (LNS), a section of younger (-27,000-5000 14C yrs BP) sediment rep- resenting both local components and Nile-depositcd componcnts. that enclose a rich in- ventory of prchistoric cultures younger than Acheulean. Although examples of WCGL can be studied at locations remote from the Aswan Reservoir, most outcrops of ENG, WCGL, and LNS described in the field in Egyptian Nubia are now submerged under the water of the Reservoir.

Download

Share

COinS