Based on an international colloquium held in the British Museum in 1998.

Includes bibliographical references.

Routes and roots in Egypt's western desert: the early Holocene resettlement of the eastern Sahara -- Implications of incipient social complexity in the late Neolithic in the Egyptian Sahara -- Palaeo-ecologic and palaeo-climatic background to socio-economic changes in the south western desert of Egypt -- Human responses to Holocene environmental changes in the northern Dongola Reach of the Nile, Sudan -- Early and mid-Holocene ceramics from the Dakhleh Oasis: traditions and influences -- Early and mid-Holocene ceramics from the Dakhleh Oasis: macroscopic, petrographic and technological descriptions -- Another Old Kingdom site in the Dakhleh Oasis -- Policing the desert: Old Kingdom activity around the Dakhleh Oasis -- Oases amphorae of the New Kingdom -- Opening the narrow doors of the desert: discoveries of the Theban Desert road survey -- Gravel of the desert and broken pots in the road: ceramic evidence from the routes between the Nile and Kharga Oasis -- A 'Tasian' Tomb in Egypt's eastern desert -- Cosmology, ideology and personal religious practice in ancient Egyptian rock art -- The deserts and the fifteenth and sixteenth upper Egyptian nomes during the Middle Kingdom -- Ancient gold mining in the eastern desert of Egypt and the Nubian desert of Sudan -- Pharaonic stone quarries in the Egyptian deserts -- Life on the edge: gemstones, politics and stress in the deserts of Egypt and Nubia -- On the antiquities of the eastern desert.

All Ages.