Dating stratified settlement sites at Kom K and Kom W: Fifth millennium BCE radiocarbon ages for the Fayum Neolithic

The earliest evidence of the use of domesticated plants, a traditional hallmark of Neolithic societies in the ancient Near East, first appears in Egypt in archaeological sites in the Fayum depression. Due to wind erosion often resulting in deflation of sediments in this region, stratified sites containing organic materials are rare and the depositional contexts of some earlier 14C measurements on Fayum Neolithic materials are not precisely documented. We report the results of 29 AMS-based 14C determinations on charcoal recovered from stratified contexts in two Fayum Neolithic village sites, Kom K and Kom W. These data assign a mid-5th millennium BCE age to these sites and permit an estimate of the length of their occupation to be approximately three centuries.