Tunisia - El Akarit

The archeological research program at Wadi El Akarit (Gulf of Gabes, Southern Tunisia) has been undertaken in accordance with the archeological and historical cooperation agreement between Tunisia and France. It has required the collaboration of its institutional partners, the Institut National du Patrimoine (I.N.P.) in Tunis and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (I.R.D.) in Paris. Excavation work begun in 1991 has demonstrated a fundamental finding, the presence of human occupation structure. The first radiocarbon datings indicate that people lived there at least 50,000 years before our time. Results of several series of crossed datings by means of thermoluminescence and uranium series disequilibrium methods are in favor of a noticeable older age. Such a finding calls into question the traditionnally accepted notion of the Moustero-Aterian transition in Southern Tunisia.