Khartoum Culture

the name for a series of Neolithic cultures of the fourth millennium B.C., named after finds made near Khartoum. The British scholar A. J. Arkell began investigating the Khartoum culture in 1945.

Two chronologically consecutive cultures are distinguished: the Early Khartoum culture and the Rounded Chisels culture. Finds from the Early Khartoum culture include lunates, large end scrapers, grain mortars for crushing the seeds of wild plants, weights for nets, and pottery.

The population, which had negroid features, engaged in hunting, fishing, and gathering; the people of the Rounded Chisels culture also raised small goats. The lunates were supplemented by large axes, chisels with polished blades, javelins, maces, bone harpoons, hooks made from shell, and burnished pottery. The similarity between artifacts of the Khartoum culture and those of the Badarian culture reveals a link between the peoples of Neolithic Sudan and Egypt.