A largely accepted paradigm in African recent prehistory considers pastoralism to be the main subsistence source of food-producing communities along the Sudanese Nile valley from the 6th millennium cal BC onwards. This paradigm is constraining the development of a wider theoretical perspective that assumes, instead, a regionally differentiated picture of the economic and social organisation of local communities in northeastern Africa. This paradigm is thus the strongest impediment to achieving reliable and convincing syntheses of the transition from food collection to food production in this area. New data from Upper Nubia and central Sudan open the way for different and more complex scenarios and a new understanding of the local transition from agro-pastoral to agricultural practices. A more systematic data-based approach helps to change radically our perception of different Neolithic trajectories. Moreover, it helps to place in a different perspective—based on various levels of identity formation processes—change and continuity along the chrono-cultural sequence, as well as the different meanings that each local group confers on apparently similar acts in the context of the funerary ideology.

非洲近代史前史中一个被广泛接受的范式认为，自公元前六世纪起，畜牧业是苏丹尼罗河谷沿线粮食生产社区的主要生存来源。这种范式限制了更广泛的理论视角的发展，相反，该理论视角假设了东北非当地社区经济和社会组织的区域差异图景。因此，这种范式是在该领域实现从粮食采集到粮食生产的过渡的可靠且令人信服的综合的最大障碍。来自上努比亚和苏丹中部的新数据为不同和更复杂的情景开辟了道路，并为当地从农牧业向农业实践的转变提供了新的认识。更系统的基于数据的方法有助于从根本上改变我们对不同新石器时代轨迹的看法。此外，它有助于从不同的角度来看待——基于不同层次的身份形成过程——沿着时间文化序列的变化和连续性，以及每个当地群体在特定的背景下赋予明显相似行为的不同含义。丧葬意识形态。