AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanuel Beyin. Hong Wang. Mary Prendergast. Katherine Grillo.

Lake Turkana in northern Kenya has played a central role in generating archaeological and paleoclimatic datasets relevant to studying key transitions in human prehistory. Generally, despite its rich Plio-Pleistocene hominin fossil record, the later prehistory of the basin, particularly the period between 50 and 10 ka, remains comparatively underexplored. In this paper, we discuss new radiocarbon dates from two recently excavated sites in West Turkana, namely Kokito 01 (GcJh11) and Kokito 02...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Phillips. Ofer Bar-Yosef.

This paper is concerned with interpreting the terminal Pleistocene foragers of the Nile River basin, dating between ca. 22,000 to 11,000 years BP. From Wadi Halfa at the Second Cataract, downriver to Qena, at least twelve archaeological traditions occupied and/or utilized the Nile River ecosystem, with subsistence strategies organized around the Nile floods, and the migration of migrating birds. Some settlement patterns within the confines of the Valley shifted seasonally, while others...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abebe Taffere.

Archaeological excavation which had been conducted in 2009 and 2010 in the Ziway- Shala Basin, close to the Bulbula River Canyon at B1s4 site, has yielded lithic assemblages and few faunal remains. Two human occupation horizons (PS1 and PS2) were identified which are separated by an occupational hiatus at the very end of the terminal Pleistocene. Analysis of debitage on both unit levels indicates the presence of similar features that lead us to assume that B1s4 lithic industry was oriented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryce Davenport. Douglas Comer. Will Megarry. Alexandru Popa. Sergiu Musteata.

The Moldovan site of Orheiul Vechi has been continuously occupied since the Late Paleolithic due in part to its commanding position over the local landscape and its strategic situation on the nexus of Eurasian cultural flows and population movements. From the Iron Age onward, the inhabitants of Orheiul Vechi took advantage of natural fortifications, tributary access to the Dniester River, and nearby chernozem soils to consolidate a long-term power base. Using data from ongoing archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Cashdan.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tommy Budd. Amanda Wissler.

Periosteal lesions are often used as non-specific indicators of overall levels of stress and health in the past. Using medieval London samples, Sharon DeWitte (2014) demonstrated that distinguishing between active and healed periosteal lesions can significantly improve our understanding of stress and differential frailty. She found that healed lesions correlated with higher levels of survivorship when compared to active or no lesions. This study examines whether such a pattern may be observable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandi Copeland. Hayley Cawthra. Richard Cowling. Julia Lee-Thorp. Petrus LeRoux.

In contrast to Holocene sites, late Pleistocene sites along the South African south coast are dominated by large and medium-sized ungulates, many of which are typical of open-habitat grasslands and migration ecosystems. During much of the late Pleistocene, sea levels were substantially lower, exposing the Paleo-Agulhas Plain up to 100 km south of the modern coastline. The Migration Ecosystem hypothesis proposes that the Paleo-Agulhas Plain supported a migration ecosystem driven by summer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Parcak.

This paper will discuss the range and type of studies possible based on past and current advances in the field of satellite remote sensing. It will focus on work in the Middle East, North Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Atlantic. The paper will primarily focus on the range and type of questions is it possible to ask (and in some cases answer) using a diverse range of satellite datasets combined with intensive ground survey and excavation. It will also provide a range if...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Cutts. Sarah Hlubik.

Recognizing fire evidence in the record can be challenging and contentious. Aside from baked earth features – hearths, daub, etc. – a widely reported associated artifact is fire-cracked rock (FCR). Unlike flaked stone assemblages, FCR lacks a standardized description, criteria, test or model; archaeologists often learn identification ‘in the field.’ Recent actualistic studies have demonstrated that a previously undescribed type of FCR has likely been unknowingly lumped with other ‘angular...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kappelman. Lawrence Todd. Neil Tabor. Mulugeta Feseha. Marvin Kay.

We present data from open-air MSA sites situated along the trunk tributaries of the Blue Nile River in the lowlands of NW Ethiopia that provide information about the behaviors of anatomically modern Homo sapiens in the Horn near the time of its movement out of Africa. The diverse fauna includes mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish from a wide range of body sizes. Stone raw materials include cryptocrystalline quartz and basalt cobbles, both found on the local gravel bars and in exposed basalt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Bohannan.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ella Beaudoin. David R. Braun. Jonathan S. Reeves.

Although studies of lithic technology have been ongoing for over a century our knowledge of what tools were used for is still poorly resolved. Detailed analysis of microscopic damage has been the major focus studies of tool use. However, these studies are often limited to a subset of tools that have not undergone post-depositional damage and can be studied microscopically. Recently new approaches to damage patterns on the edges of simple flaked tools have been used to develop assemblage scale...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Thompson. Jordan Towers. Christopher Henshilwood.

Tortoises are one of the most common faunal components at many Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites on the southern coast of South Africa. They provide protein, fat, and other ‘animal’ resources in a ‘collectable’ package, which gives rare insight into the collected component of MSA diet. At most MSA sites, tortoise assemblages are dominated by Chersina angulata, a medium-sized tortoise with sufficient calories to provide approximately 20 – 30% of the daily energetic requirements for an active adult...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Lubkemann. Paul Gardullo. Jaco Boshoff. Yolanda Pinto Duarte. David Morgan.

This is an abstract from the "To Move Forward We Must Look Back: The Slave Wrecks Project at 10 Years" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing on work in Mozambique and South Africa undertaken over the last five years this paper examines how the Slave Wrecks Project’s field research program and its stakeholder engagement initiatives have come to inform each other in profoundly transformative ways. Our investigations of specific slaver shipwrecks...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Albert J. Ammerman. Diane Gifford-Gonzalez. Albertus Voorrips.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Diehl.

Ostrich eggs have been a valuable resource for Sub-Saharan populations for thousands of years, offering a rich nutritional source as well as a means of transporting water. While burned ostrich eggshell (OES) fragments are common at sites, it is difficult to determine whether they were subsistence refuse or the disposed remnants of canteens. Current tools for analyzing OES burning conditions involve expensive and time consuming isotopic analysis or scanning electron microscopy. This research aims...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Harrower. Joseph C. Mazzariello.

The Empire of Aksum was one of the earliest and most influential African complex polities, yet remains one of the world’s most scantly documented ancient civilizations. The Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) surveyed a 196-km2 area between the ancient capital city of Aksum and the Red Sea over four field seasons from 2005-2008. This work documented 137 archaeological sites, including 7 ancient towns larger than 6 hectares, and contributes a substantial body of data on geographies of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorothea F. Bleek.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann. Anna Berim. Korey Brownstein. Barry Hewlett. Philippe Charlier.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Today, marijuana consumption is becoming decriminalized across the Western world. This legal change is often followed by increased research activity, specifically regarding crop ‘improvement’ and the concentration of the plant’s psychoactive compounds. This situation resembles the process characterizing the commodification of tobacco during the Colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Cashdan.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacques Berque.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Lyons.

The transfer of pottery making skills and knowledge is well studied in Africa using the chaîne opératoire methodology. Chaîne opératoire is understood as a social practice in which technological choices are guided by social choices that potters learn as members of a potter community. The complement of technological choices of this group of potters creates a unique technological style. Africanists use technological styles to study the history of potter communities through time and space. But...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oliver Davies. K. Gordon-Gray.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimball Banks. Linda Scott Cummings. Signe Snortland. Maria Gatto.

Wadi Kubbaniya is the largest wadi extending from the Western Desert to the Nile in Upper Egypt. The Combined Prehistoric Expedition devoted four seasons in the late 1970s-early 1980s investigating Late Paleolithic (20,000-12,000 BP) settlement-subsistence in the wadi. The Expedition documented one of the most complete occupational sequences for this period in Upper Egypt. Because of excellent preservation, the Expedition was able to reconstruct the vegetation and identify floral resources...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theodore Marks.

The shifts in land and site use strategies that occurred over the Middle to Later Stone Age (MSA to LSA) transition remain poorly understood across the full diversity of environments in Southern Africa. In the Central Namib Desert of Namibia, two rockshelters, Erb Tanks and Mirabib, provide insights into these dynamics within the context of a persistent arid to hyper-arid climate. Employing data from an ongoing lithic sourcing survey, we argue that groups equipped with MSA-type lithic...