Spatial analysis of the Khartoum Variant Site 8-B-10C (8th-6th mill. BC) at Sai Island (Sudan): preliminary results

Sai is an island in the Nile River located in northern Sudan, 30 km south of Aswan High Dam (Lake Nasser), at the Egyptian-Sudanese border. Numerous early Holocene sites have been located on the island and have been assigned to the so-called Khartoum Variant period (7600-4800 BC). One of them, Site 8-B-10C, revealed a particularly rich archaeological deposit and was extensively excavated. The excavations involved a surface of 7x15 m (105 square metres), organized by a regular 1x1-m grid. Data for spatial analysis were organised according to a GIS platform (ArcMap® 10.3). The Spatial Autocorrelation Global Moran’s and the Getis-Ord General G statistics highlight high clustered spatial patterns in the dataset of the site.