Aspects of African Archaeology Sodmein Cave Site, Red Sea Mountains, Egypt: development, stratigraphy and palaeoenvironment JAN MOEYERSONS, PERRE VERMEERSCH, PHLP VAN PEER, WM VAN NEER, H. BEECKMAN AND E. DE CONNCK Location of the cave and geological history of the area Wadi Sodmein Cave, called site QSR-44 by Prickett (1979), is currently being excavated under the direction of P. Vermeersch, University of Leuven, Belgium. The site is located in the Red Sea Moun tains of the Egyptian Eastern Desert at 26° 14'27"N and 33°58' 12"E, about 40 km NNW of Quseir. The cliff of Thebes limestone dominates the west bank of Wadi Sodmein, where it cuts a 3 km long gap through the Gebel Duwi, a local hogback. The Thebes Formation is an Eocene marine limestone deposit containing numerous chert nod ule bands (Sai'd 1962). It belongs to a sequence of Cretaceous to early Tertiary deposits accumulated on the slowly up-doming peneplain of the Afro-Arabian Precambrian shield (Briem 1989). Relative uplift of the Red Sea Mountains since middle to upper Pliocene times has separated the Eo-Nile (Sai'd 1982) luvial system from the Red Sea basin. The latter saw the development of internal and external piedmonts, connected by narrow, deeply entrenched gorges through small resistant rock barriers (Freytet et al. 1993). The Gebel Duwi hogback on Thebes limestone is such a barrier. Ac cording to the geological map (USAID 1978), the Eocene Thebes Formation outcrops at the site. Climate, weathering and erosion phenomena in the Thebes limestone cliffs For more than 3,000 (Alaily 1993) to 5,000 (Sonntag and Thorweihe 1993) years the site has been extremely arid and uninhabited. Vegetation in the valley is very restricted: there are some halophytes in the wadi bed and some very rare, dispersed Acacia. Dorcas gazelle have oten been observed on the wadi loor. At Quseir an annual rainfall of 4 mm and a mean temperature of 28°C have been recorded (Griffiths 1972). In the Red Sea Mountains precipitation can be higher, and temperature can fall close to freezing point on cold winter mornings. The irregular precipitation regime shows long, almost completely dry periods that are interrupted by rare, high-magnitude events like the June 1934 storm with 34 mm of precipitation (Planhol and Rognon 1970). Stream loods and mass erosion that occur during such extreme and rare events are the dominant landscape-modelling proc esses. Significant rains also affected the area during the 1994- 1995 winter season.