R12 is a middle Neolithic cemetery located in the Northern Dongola Reach on the banks of the Seleim Nile palaeochannel of modern-day Sudan.

[1] Centro Veneto di Studi Classici e Orientali excavated the site, within the concession of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society and after an agreement with it, between 2000 and 2003 over three digging seasons.

Contents of the graves include ceramics, animal bones, grinding stones, human skeletons, and plant remains.

The mound is a layer of Nile silt on top of an irregular sandy deposit.

Over the past 7000 years, wind and water have eroded the mound causing it to have the morphology that it did before excavation.

Most of the pottery is made from fine sand temper and fired in an earthen kiln.

Other materials that the pottery could be partially made from are chaff, limestone splinters, and shells.

A jar with covered with ochre powder and a complex dot decoration was found.

[2] The second type is decorated with hatched, oblique, regularly spaced bands covering the entire beaker.

The fourth group of beakers are generally squat in shape and have thin horizontal bands with hatched dotted lines and rounded rims.

Grave 60 contained a person wearing headband made out of ostrich eggshell beads.

This particularly rich assemblage suggests this person may have been an artisan who specialized in the production of stone jewelry, with the perforator and palettes as their tools.

[4] Pendants, bangles, and lip/ear plugs are the common forms of stone jewelry found at R12.

In general, lip and ear plugs are common in other Neolithic cemeteries in Sudan and Nubia.

The most common material found in the graves is flint possibly taken from a nearby gravel deposit containing quartz, agate, carnelian, and chert.

Geometrics were the most common tool type found and are made from the finest raw materials.

Backed pieces were the second most common tool type found followed by end-scrapers, perforators, notches/denticulates, and varia.

Even though the pottery at R12 shows change over the 600 active site years, the lithic assemblage does not.

The presence of lithics and other artifacts in this grave could represent wealth in terms of quantity and variety of materials.

The stone tools were mainly made from syenite, sodalite, soapstone, sandstone, and pumice.

[8] Mammals found at R12 include bovids, cattle, sheep, goats, gazelles, monkeys, elephant, hippopotamus, and a dog/fox.

[8] Today, the Guinea fowl family is local to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

The gastropod species Limicolaria cailliaudi was not eaten and thus must likely have served a symbolic or ornamental function.

[8] Plant remains at R12 mostly consist of grass inflorescence in the form of white powdery deposits.

This shows a possible earlier connection between regions in the Sahara Desert and southwest Asia than previously thought.

[9] The spatial distribution of R12 gives insight to the social structure of the people who created the cemetery.

The children found with mace heads could signify a symbol of their family or lineage authority.

Some grave goods such as animal remains, axes, and grinding stones could signify that the people of R12 were hunting.

Objects found in graves at each site include pottery, ground stone, lithics, personal adornments, pigments, and animal remains.

[14] Today rainfall in the Dongola reach region of Sudan is an average of 23 mm a year, making the climate dry.