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There are, however, many problems associated with the Aterian. Although it was first described nearly 100 years ago (Reygasse 1919-1920, 1921-1922) and is represented in many sites throughout the Sahara and North African coast, it has never been well understood. To some extent this situation is completely understandable: most of the Aterian is found in the Sahara desert in surface contexts devoid of bone, datable objects, and stratigraphy.
Aterian assemblages are found in a huge area of North Africa. They extend from the Atlantic coast in the west to the Nile Valley in the east and from the Mediterranean coast in the north to the southern Sahara in the south (Western Desert, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad) (Hawkins and Kleindienst 2001; Haour 2003; Patsy 1999; Clark 1993; Wendorf and Schild 1992; Garcea 2004; Van Peer 2001; Bouzouggar 1997; Debénath et al 1986).
Even for those areas where we do have better preservation and stratified sites, our knowledge remains very limited and based on excavations that were, for the most part, carried out in the middle of the 20th Century before the development of modern methods of excavation and dating.
