Plant exploitation during the Early and Middle Holocene in the Tadrart Acacus (Central Sahara, Libya) - Pollen evidence of changes.

Palynological investigations carried out so far in the archaeological sites of the Tadrart Acacus have provided a great deal of information about Holocene pollen flora, vegetation and palaeoclimatic oscillations in the area, factors which significantly affect human behaviour. Anthropogenic pollen was important for investigating ethnological aspects. In fact it evidenced the exploitation of a variety of plants, testifying or suggesting that humans used them based on cultural knowledge.In this paper, the Uan Afuda Cave and Uan Muhuggiag Rockshelter, two sites of remarkable archaeological and artistic interest [6, 7], were selected as examples to discuss the relationships between environmental and cultural changes suggested by pollen spectra obtained from two reference sequences, and studied by archaeologists and various field archaeo-environmentalists. The Uan Afuda cave was occupied by hunter-gatherers groups during the Early Holocene, and the Uan Muhuggiag rockshelter was occupied by pastoralists during the Middle Holocene. On the whole their Holocene deposits dated from 10 to 3.5 kyrs bp.