AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)
451-475 (535 Records)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Some "muse"ings on past and recent encounters with lutins, naiads and non-anthropomorphic forces: Reconsidering vocabulary and questions concerning "religion" and "belief" in face of ethno-archaeological experiences in Madagascar. (2015)
This contribution involves a re-examination of assertions we have made in the past concerning "religion", "belief" and "ideology: jettisoning some, reasserting others, and offering "refinements" where appropriate. Often limited cultural exposure to a circumscript terrain of contemporary religions in service of the state contributes significantly to the initial framing of our questions (and attendant expectation of answers). One of our lives, embedded in context in rural and urban Madagascar,...
Sourcing Lithic Raw Materials in the Namib Desert: Exploring land use and technological organization (2017)
Under a technological organization perspective, archaeologists seek to understand how prehistoric societies organized their activities across landscapes and how variation at individual sites articulates with changes in large scale land use systems. Lithic sourcing offers a powerful tool for testing hypotheses about technological organization and land use, but its application across the globe has, until recently, been hindered by expense and methodological difficulties. In this paper, we use pXRF...
Spatial and chronological components of Middle Stone Age artifact assemblage variability in deeply buried alluvial fan contexts (2015)
Alluvial fan deposition characterizes the geological setting of many Stone Age sites in the East African Rift System. In these settings, researchers must consider multiple origins of technological variability, such as chronology, spatial trends, and depositional history. Because of logistical constraints, deeply buried artifacts in alluvial fans can only be examined through small excavation windows or where deposits have been heavily eroded. Under both scenarios, variability in in situ artifact...
The spread of iron metallurgy: the African continent (2017)
Theories of the origin(s) of iron production and the spread of ferrous technology have provoked many decades of lively and enduring debate. The notion that iron production developed in one core location – from where knowledge of it spread – has been challenged by claims of early, independent inventions of iron production in Africa, India and China. However, it has proved problematic to verify the timing and contexts of these multi-origin hypotheses without placing undue emphasis on isolated...
Sr and Sr / CA in Marine and Terrestrial Foodwebs In the Southwestern Cape, South Africa (1988)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in faunal tooth enamel from Boomplaas and Nelson Bay Cave record Late Pleistocene/Holocene environments in the southern Cape, South Africa (2015)
The Pleistocene palaeoclimates and palaeoenvironments of southernmost Africa are important in both global climate studies and studies of human evolution, but remain poorly documented through time and space. In order to contribute to this project, we have analysed δ13C and δ18O in approximately 350 samples of faunal tooth enamel from Boomplaas Cave and Nelson Bay Cave, in the southern Cape, South Africa. The Boomplaas samples span the last ca. 70 kya, and show fluctuations in δ13C indicating...
Statistical Evidence For a New Method of Identifying Anthropogenic Fire in the Archaeological Record (2017)
Clarifying evidence for anthropogenic fire in the archaeological record has been subject to contention and vagueness. This uncertainty centers not on evidence for fire, rather what constitutes it being human-controlled. New research pursuing this question suggests that a peculiar angular fragment, termed thermal curved-fractures (TCF), are the byproduct of knapped materials (flakes, cores, bifaces) exposed at length to high heat. We present here results of experiments expanding our...
Statuae Meae Ubique Steterunt: Some Considerations on Julia Domna’s Statue Bases from North Africa (2015)
Roman African provinces are characterized by an extraordinary number of epigraphic sources concerning the dynasty of the first African emperor, Septimius Severus. Among these are many statues dedicated to Severus’ Syrian wife Julia Domna, whose presence at the side of both her husband and her son Caracalla is recorded by the historical accounts on this period. A survey of the African inscriptions that commemorated the erection of statues in her honor leads to the conclusion that at least...
Stone Bodies and Second Lives: Preserving the Person in Ancient Ethiopia (2016)
Aksum, the capital of an ancient northern Ethiopian kingdom (50-700 AD), is well known for its elaborate funerary stelae, the largest of which were carved in the impression of multi-storied “houses.” Prior to a widespread conversion to Christianity, the Aksumites buried their dead in kin-groups either in tombs or in shafts that cluster around the stelae. Human remains are often burned, fragmentary, disarticulated and jumbled, creating an impression of ephemeralness that contrasts with the...
Stoneworking Technology (1997)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Storage, Cooking, and Transport. A Preliminary Residue Analysis of Ceramics from Mai Adrasha (2017)
This paper outlines the preliminary investigation of a collection of diagnostic and undiagnostic ceramics recovered from the site of Mai Adrasha, located in the Shire region of Ethiopia. Mai Adrasha is one of the largest and arguably most significant early town sites west of Aksum dating to the pre-Aksumite to Early Aksumite periods (12th century BCE-2nd century CE) located in the Western Tigray. The site consists of a cemetery and a domestic area characterized by a collection of stone walls and...
Stuck like glue: Case studies in assessing the variability of hafting adhesives during the southern African Later Stone Age (2016)
Variations in design and function of any tool represent adaptive strategies employed by humans to exist within a landscape. With the increased application of both chemical analysis and microscopy to archaeological material, the identification of hafting adhesives, the glue of composite tools, provides a means by which we may evaluate how members of our species existed within dynamic environments and exploited its resources. In southern Africa, the well-preserved assemblages of the Later Stone...
‘Stuck like Glue’: A Multi-method Analysis of Hafting Adhesives from Later Stone Age Assemblages in Southern Africa (2017)
The characterization of hafting adhesives, the glue of composite tools, by chemical analysis and microscopy provides a means by which we may evaluate the organic components of technologies. In southern Africa, the well-preserved assemblages of the Later Stone Age (LSA) present a unique opportunity to evaluate the procured raw materials related to tool manufacture, with a focus on the ingredients of these plastic components. This paper presents the findings of a multi-site study of hafting...
A Supplemental Approach: The Influence of Ann Stahl’s Interdisciplinarity to African Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a long history of interdisciplinary research on the precolonial African past, with historians, archaeologists, and historical linguists seeking out and drawing on insights from their allied disciplines. These scholars often seek to integrate different types...
Swahili Agriculture and Power Dynamics in Regional Perspective (2017)
Urbanization along the Swahili coast coincided with an increasing importance of Islam, stone architecture, and materials traded through connections built inland as well as with Indian Ocean merchants. Archaeobotanical data from the town of Chwaka on Pemba Island, Tanzania (AD 1100-1500) suggest that foodways turned towards Asian crops, including rice and legumes, during the urbanization process. Beyond subsistence, crops held political power. Jeffrey Fleisher (2010) has suggested that feasting...
Systematic Differences in Sieved and Point-Provenienced Fauna Ecofacts from PP5-6, South Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In zooarchaeological analysis, there is a tendency to give point-provenienced ecofacts analytical priority over ecofacts found in sieved material. To test for the effects of this bias, we conducted a zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of faunal ecofacts (n = 841) found in the 10 mm sieved material from...
Take Me Home Desert Roads…Stable Oxygen Isotope Analysis and Migration in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt (2015)
Analysis of stable oxygen isotope ratios in adult bone apatite and tooth enamel from the Kellis 2 cemetery (50-450 AD) in the Dakhleh Oasis allows for greater insight into ancient migration between this remote locality and the Nile Valley. Analyses of 45 adult males and 35 adult females are compared against δ18O values from three contemporaneous Roman-Christian sites and one New Kingdom site located along the Nile Valley. The average δ18Ovsmow value for the Nile Valley sample is -31.61‰ +/-...
A Tale of Two Tombs: the relationship between Khonsu's funerary monument and that of Userhat (2015)
Egypt is well known for its long-running funerary traditions, and one of the most fruitful avenues of research on the topic is the study of decorated tombs at the ancient site of Thebes (modern Luxor). The cemetery complex that served this large settlement and religious center during the New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1070 BCE) contains thousands of graves. This paper examines two nearly contemporaneous tombs that although commissioned to hold the burials of different men, have a great deal in...
Taphonomic and geological approaches to the identification of in situ versus ex situ archaeological material: a case study from BK East, Bed II, Olduvai Gorge (2017)
A variety of post-depositional processes can add to, subtract from, and/or spatially reconfigure archaeological deposits. The challenge for archaeologists, then, is to unravel these processes in order to assess the fidelity with which a given deposit reflects hominin behavior. BK East, an early Pleistocene locality in Olduvai Gorge’s middle/upper Bed II, preserves stone tools, butchered animal bones, and hominin remains. This rich archaeo-paleontological collection rests within an interbedded...
Taphonomic evidence for human accumulation of small mammals from Pinnacle Point Site 5-6 and other MSA sites in South Africa (2015)
Our capacity to detect the utilization of small prey resources by MSA humans can help shed light on subsistence strategies, cognition, and social organization during this critical period in human evolution. Recent analyses of South African MSA faunas suggest an expansion of dietary breadth after ~100 ka with the increase in the exploitation of small mammals (<5 kg) during MIS 4, but until now there has been little taphonomic evidence to support these conclusions. I present the results of a...
Taphonomy of a modern landscape bone assemblage in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania (2017)
Bone assemblages from modern landscapes can help address a variety of issues, from the degree to which bone scatters accurately reflect local habitats to what variables condition the deposition, preservation, and spatial distribution of faunal material. In 2015, systematic pedestrian survey recovered ~350 bone specimens within a 200m x 200m area of open grassland about two kilometers north of Olduvai Gorge in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). Weathering profiles suggest an exposure,...
Technological Organization Strategies during the East African Late Stone Age: Blade Production and the Evolution of Standardized Technology (2015)
Ol Tepesi rockshelter (GsJi53) is located in Kenya’s central Rift Valley on the southern slope of Mt. Eburu, northwest of Lake Naivasha. Its 30-meter high rear wall and 45-meter wide floor would have provided prehistoric inhabitants with a vast habitable area. Excavated deposits span the most recent 17,000 years, from the Iron Age back to the late Pleistocene LSA. The base of the sequence was not reached and likely extends further back in time. Almost 200,000 artifacts, including pottery,...
"Tell me what you are eating and I tell you who are you": Differences in Subsistence Systems of Elite and Non-Elite Gamo Society of the Ethiopia Highlands during Historical Times (2018)
There is little archaeobotanical data from Ethiopia, in this presentation, we will be comparing samples from two historic domestic archaeological sites spanning from late seventeen centuries to the late eighteen century A.D. within the same environment (Gamo highlands in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (SNNPR), Ethiopia) with the intention of examining status differences through subsistence remains. The food habits of past human societies are of importance because the act of...
Temporal and Spatial Variability in Pre-Aksumite Lithics from Mezber, NE. Ethiopia: Social and Economic Implications (2017)
With over 33,000 total excavated flaked stone artifacts and >18,000 analyzed from deposits in primary context, Mezber offers a unique opportunity to understand the role of lithics in Pre-Askumite societies. Using multiple raw materials and reduction sequences, knappers produced a wide array of LSA/Neolithic tools for domestic use, and a narrower range for specialized activities. Locally available chert was the most common raw material, although pXRF results indicate ≥3 as yet unknown distant...