Morocco - Casablanca

Archaeological Mission “Coastline”, Casablanca Programme

The Maghreb countries, remote from the original Eastern Africa, abounds in remnants of former peoplings. Set between Saharan Africa and Europe, Morocco offers prime material for understanding cultural exchanges and peopling dynamics during different periods of prehistory. Most of the solid documents regarding Morocco come from the Meseta, even though a very large number of sites have been identified inland. Casablanca holds an internationally-recognised key position. In order for the city to develop into Morocco’s main port since 1907, a large number of quarries had to be opened, first at the city’s outskirts, then increasingly remote from the city centre, as it grew. The mining operations cut through layers from the Pleistocene, the Pliocene and the Upper Miocene, and revealed an outstanding prehistoric heritage.

This set of structures, unique in the Maghreb, has been the focus of a joint research programme since 1978, involving the Institute of Sciences of Archaeology and Heritage of the Kingdom of Morocco and a Mission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Morocco “Coastline” mission. Most of the work over the past 15 years has been focused on the Ahl-al-Oughlam (formerly Déprez), Thomas I and Ulad Hamida I (former Thomas III) quarries. Since then, they have consistently yielded remnants of the utmost importance for understanding the first peoplings in the Far Maghreb: thousands of stone tools that characterise each stage of the Acheulean material culture, collections of fossil mammals, some of which are the most abundant in the Maghreb, with several new species and, lastly, new Homo erectus remains.

This work has made it possible to place the main stages of human evolution and the evolution of material techniques and cultures in Northwest Africa in a highly-detailed lithostratigraphic and biostratigraphic setting, unique outside of the East African rift.