Excavations at Oued Beht in 2023 revealed a ditch, embankment and wall built in several phases. Researchers interpret the system as probably defensive, adding evidence of substantial prehistoric construction in north-west Africa.
Researchers say excavations at Oued Beht in north-west Morocco uncovered a roughly 4,000–3,500-year-old ditch, embankment and wall system. Built in several phases across a narrow ridge, the structure adds evidence that prehistoric communities there could organize substantial construction work.
The Oued Beht Archaeological Project had previously identified an older agricultural complex dating to around 5,400–4,900 years ago. Activity during that earlier Neolithic period centered on the larger, open northern area; by the time of the newly dated construction, it had shifted toward the narrower southern ridge.
Archaeologist Armand Ruhlmann documented three walls and a natural steep slope forming a fourth side in the 1930s. He interpreted the arrangement as a defensive barrier across a spur, but its precise date and nature remained uncertain.
In an account published by ScienceDaily, researchers who took part in the 2023 excavations describe a ditch, raised embankment and wall between the river and a ravine. The system cut off the ridge’s southern tip, an arrangement that underlies their defensive interpretation.
The researchers base the construction chronology on radiocarbon dating of deposits associated with the structures. They place the original building work in a period equivalent to the Bronze Age elsewhere in the western Mediterranean, and describe it as the earliest known large-scale construction of a probably defensive nature in north Africa beyond the Nile Valley.
Analysis
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The researchers infer that digging the ditch and building the embankment required planning and coordinated labor. They suggest the move toward the more defensible southern ridge may reflect changing settlement strategies.
They propose protection or asserting power over strategic locations as possible purposes, with competition over land, resources or movement as possible pressures. The threats the structure might have addressed remain unknown. It is also uncertain whether prehistoric Oued Beht was a permanent village, a seasonal center or another kind of gathering place.
The ridge was used again during the 11th–13th centuries AD, the researchers say. The structure was rebuilt, a hamlet or farm occupied a nearby hilltop, and a cemetery lay between the two areas. These remains show that later communities returned to the ridge many centuries after the prehistoric settlement had been abandoned.
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