The site, a small shelter, is situated in a short wadi (fig. 1), which drains into the northern part of the large depression (figs. 2 & 3), east of the Gebel um Hammad and the Gebel Duwi, northwest of Quseir on the Red Sea coast in Egypt (26°16,332’ N; 33° 57,370’ E).

During the 1995 field campaign, Dr. E. Paulissen and Dr. J. Moeyersons, who had joined a team working at the nearby Sodmein Cave (Vermeerschet al.1994), discovered, north of Sodmein Cave, a shelter in a small wadi tributary of the Sodmein Valley, characterised by a canyonlike deep...

The flint² which was used at the site is not very fine grained when compared with French fine grey flint, or British chalk flint. The flint has suffered slight structural transformation with the development of a microcrystalline form, with clearly shaped crystals floating in silica jelly matrices. Under a transmitted light microscope³, this flint is rich in a dark mineral solution, which may have caused the colouration, probably of iron impurities. It ranges from sub-crystalline to micro-crystalline with irregular but fused internal partitions. Although there is a slight variation between the flints from the lower horizon, as compared to the...

The site of Tree Shelter presents the rare opportunity of investigating Neolithic vegetation and its use by humans during their visits to the Red Sea Mountains, Egypt, an area still poorly studied from an archaeobotanical point of view. The main source of archaeobotanical information for this study is wood charcoal from the Neolithic layers of the site (Archaeological Horizons [AH] 1-4). Additional plant macrofossil material from several ovicaprine coprolites was analysed. In an earlier publication (Moeyersonset al.1999) identifications were pro vided from two wood charcoal samples from the two lowermost levels, AH4 and AH5. They were no longer available...

Tree Shelter is a rock shelter in Wadi Sodmein, located in the Red Sea Mountains near El Qoseir. After a survey in 1995, small-scale excavations were carried out at the site in 1996. The site provided lumps ofin situarchaeologically rich deposits. Several habitation levels were recognised, but could not be individualised and have been attributed to five different archaeological horizons (AH). The upper horizon, AH1, has a subrecent hearth at its surface with a date of 200 BP ± 35 (GrN-22559). AH2 and AH3 are Neolithic, and comparable to the Middle and Late Neolithic from the Egyptian Western...

Tree Shelter has been repeatedly occupied, probably always for a short–term period, from about 8.0 ka calBC on until about 3.7 calBC. The occupation horizons within this time period can not be individualised. For that reason five successive archaeological horizons have been defined (AH1-AH5). The attribution of an artefact to one of these horizons was based on the attribution to a field layer, on the study of the stratigraphic sedi ment genesis, and on the tri-dimensional position of the artefact. Each of the archaeological horizons represents a succession of probably short time visits to Tree Shelter. Such short-term visits...