AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)
501-525 (535 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Amongst his many intellectual contributions, Richard Redding was a leading scholar in the use of zooarchaeology, specifically the production, distribution, redistributio,n and consumption of animal products, to understand political economies. Through systemic approaches, Redding was able to explore the...
Understanding Sociopolitical Change through Ceramic Morphological Diversity in the Ancient Nubian Hinterlands (2016)
Ceramics have played a central role in archaeological studies of ancient Nubia. They have been used to refine the regional chronology and to enhance our understanding of social, political, and economic processes. While many such studies have focused primarily on large, centralized polities, fewer attempts have been made to investigate how hinterland communities engaged with changing life ways throughout the region’s long cultural history. This paper examines a collection of ceramic samples taken...
UNDERSTANDING VARIATION: STYLISTIC ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF ROCK ART FROM THE MAKGABENG PLATEAU, LIMPOPO PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA (2015)
The use of style is in its infancy in southern African rock art studies with work on style originating with broad generalisations which linked modes of subsistence, material culture and lifeways to style. Recent studies have focused on regional art traditions. The author presents a research case study that advocated for the use of style as praxis. Looking at specific depictions of cross-cultural motifs from the Makgabeng plateau, South Africa, this paper explores the intricate spatio-temporal...
Unearthing a town from the sky: Kom Wasit, the bird’s eye archaeological point of view. (2015)
In this presentation we will show the way we used an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to reproduce an accurate map of Kom Wasit, an archaeological site of the Nile Delta located in the province of Beheira. An orthophoto was generated using photogrammetry and GIS, which combined layers of information such as the magnetometry results and the topography survey. It was therefore possible to recreate what can be dug in the future and to understand the settlement pattern of this Late Dynastic town. SAA...
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Archaeological Survey: Results from Portugal and Mozambique (2015)
Any technological advance that can save archaeologists time, money and manpower should be explored thoroughly. This poster presents the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or Drones, as a supplemental tool to traditional archaeological survey. Examples from Portugal and Mozambique are included to give visual representations of the possible uses of drone technologies. We used a commercially-available Phantom 2 quadcopter with a GoPro camera for coastal survey in Praia Ray Cortico, Portugal....
An updated GIS-based system for calculating MNE and quantifying bone surface modification frequencies and spatial location on skeletal elements in faunal assemblages (2017)
Zooarchaeology continues to suffer methodological problems in that analysts use methods for calculating skeletal element and surface modification abundance that vary widely, are non-transparent, and almost certainly produce data that is not comparable across analysts. In 2001, Marean, Abe, Nilssen, and Stone presented a method to overcome these problems by using a GIS-based approach to calculate minimum numbers of skeletal elements (MNE) and surface modification frequencies corrected for...
The Use of Dung in Northern Morocco: Examples from Mountain Communities (2017)
This presentation focuses on the various examples collected from northern Morocco during ethnographic fieldwork on the use of dung. Apart from the most known use of dung as fuel, traditional communities in the Moroccan Rif used dung for other purposes such as flooring, tempering, manuring, making containers for storage, etc. This paper will discuss the various uses of this important material and results will be compared to other examples from other Mediterranean areas.
Using a specimen-scale approach and butchery traces on the elbow to refine paleoecological interpretations of Early Stone Age carnivory (2015)
Assemblage-scale proportions of modified specimens are difficult to link with hominins’ early versus late carcass access because fragmentation and other taphonomic processes affect assemblage composition and taphonomic trace visibility. This work advocates butchered specimen interpretation and describes the skeletal location of butchery traces inflicted during the sequence of carcass consumption behaviors. Tool-assisted carcass consumption is divided into early (defleshing limbs), middle...
Using C and N stable isotopes in ostrich eggshells to develop paleoenvironmental records for Late Pleistocene East African rock shelter sequences (2017)
The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in East Africa ~30-60 ka has been hypothesized as a response to increased resource risk due to cooler, drier Late Pleistocene environments with greater short-term variability. Local paleoenvironmental records are needed to test such hypotheses. Ostrich eggshell (OES) fragments are common in African archaeological sequences, are amenable to 14C and U-series dating, and their δ13C and δ15N values are known to correspond to the C isotopes of vegetation and...
Using Ethnoarchaeology to Interpret Archaeological Blacksmithing Sites in Togo, West Africa (2017)
Philip de Barros, Palomar College. A 2013 study of the ethnoarchaeology of the blacksmithing village of Upper Bidjomambe in the ironworking region of Bassar in northern Togo provided invaluable data to help archaeologists interpret archaeological smithing sites. Oral traditions document the village's occupation from ca. 1870 to 1970 when it was abandoned leaving it virtually intact with little disturbance or tool recycling. An 80+-year-old informant formerly from Upper Bidjomambe, who was a...
Using GIS and Archaeological Survey Data for the Reconstruction of Stone Age Settlement Patterns in the Elephant River Valley, Mozambique (2017)
The central topic of this poster focus on the conversion of archaeological survey data to a GIS format for the identification of settlement patterns by communities that inhabited the Elephant river region, a tributary of the Limpopo River (southern Mozambique), from c. 300 to c. 20 thousand years ago. Specifically, we tried to identify and characterize the settlement dynamics of each cultural phase (MSA and LSA), in order to understand the choices related to the selection of site location in...
Using Remote Sensing to Monitor and Predict the Inundation of the Abu Simbel Temples, Egypt (2017)
The Abu Simbel temples, commissioned by Ramesses II in Upper Egypt, are vulnerable to inundation due to the ancient structure’s proximity to the Nile River. Because of the rapid rise of water in the Lake Nasser reservoir, large swaths of land are becoming submerged. In order to monitor the recession of the peninsula in which the structure is located on, remote sensing techniques were employed. Using Landsat 5, 7, and 8 multispectral images coupled with SRTM data, change detection and risk maps...
Using stable isotopes to explore ancient wildebeest mobility in the context of pastoral expansion (2017)
The spread of pastoralism through Kenya may have been slowed by novel disease challenges presented to livestock by wild taxa. In particular, wildebeest-derived malignant catarrhal fever (WD-MCF), which is extremely fatal to cattle, would have been encountered by pastoralists for the first time as they moved south of the Lake Turkana Basin into the native range of East African wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus). Today, migratory wildebeest have well-known annual migration patterns. However, while...
Variability in the Middle Stone Age of the Horn of Africa: a technical tradition of southeastern Ethiopia (2016)
The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is traditionally defined by flake, point and elongated blank production associated with retouched tools (e.g. scrapers and retouched points). However, a great cultural variability is observed, whether it is linked with spatial (e.g. Brandt 1986, Clark 1988), or temporal (Early vs Late MSA, e.g. Douze 2011) variability. Here we present results from a comparative analysis of the lithic assemblages from Porc-Epic Cave (e.g. Clark and Williamson 1984, Pleurdeau, 2005) and...
Variation in butchering intensity between glacial and interglacial cycles at Pinnacle Point 5-6 (2015)
The archaeological assemblage and long stratigraphic sequence at the site of Pinnacle Point 5-6 in Western Cape, South Africa affords the opportunity to explore temporal (and possibly environmentally-mediated) changes in human behavioral regimes in the late Pleistocene. Here, examination of butchering intensity is used as a preliminary test of the hypothesis that humans would have intensified the processing of terrestrial prey in times of cooler, dryer climates, when sea levels were low and the...
Variation in Site Use through Time: Find distribution at Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1, (Western Cape, South Africa), from Marine Isotope Stage 3 through the Last Glacial Maximum (2016)
Fluctuating sea levels during Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3) resulted in radically shifting environmental zones and shoreline position along the southern African coast. Investigation of the intensity of site use and find types relative to modeled coastline proximity provides insight into early human responses to such environmental perturbations. Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (KEH1), a coastal cave site in Western Cape Province, is the only documented locality along the modern coast that preserves a...
Variations on an Osirian Theme: Gendered Expressions of Identity in Osiris Funerary Shrouds from Roman Egypt (2015)
Throughout the Roman Period in Egypt, decorated shrouds with images of the god Osiris were used in mortuary rituals and wrapped around the mummified body of the deceased. Full-length painted images of the dead in the guise of Osiris, flanked by Egyptian funerary scenes, were effective modes of representation that reveal how gender was used to facilitate the transfiguration of the deceased and aid his or her journey in the afterlife. This paper examines gendered expressions of self-presentation...
Variety of Rain Forest Subsistence Strategies. A Comparative Overview (2016)
A large scale comparative research project on the state of the peoples living in the Rain Forests of Central Africa, the Guyana’s in South America and in Melanesia, has highlighted the anthropic character of tropical rain forests. It has particularly underlined the strong correlation between biodiversity and cultural diversity and how domesticated and wild resources interact in the various subsistence systems. Activities associated with shifting cultivation contribute to man-made biodiversity in...
A View from the Periphery. Bioarchaeology and Funerary Archaeology at Al Khiday, Central Sudan (2017)
Archaeological sites south of Khartoum are much scarcer compared to those further to the north and this presentation aims to report on a multi-phase cemetery that is situated at the periphery of our archaeological knowledge. At present, burials dating to three chronological periods have been recovered at Al Khiday. The site is located on the left bank of the White Nile, approximately 20 km south of Omdurman (Khartoum). Forty-two individuals are dated to the Classic/Late Meroitic period (end of...
The Weeping Eye Motif (1959)
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What Predicts Cut Mark Frequency and Intensity? (2017)
The presence and abundance of cut marks in zooarchaeological assemblages are often used to infer carcass acquisition strategies, butchery patterns and the general availability of prey. In this paper we analyze cut mark data derived from three hunter-gatherer ethnoarchaeological assemblages (East African Hadza, Central African Bofi and Aka and Paraguayan Aché) to investigate how well carcass-size and distribution of meat predict cut mark frequencies as measured by conventional measures such as...
What’s an (Archaeological) Peasant? Notes on Rural Subjectivities in Atlantic Africa (2015)
This paper explores rural communities’ historical relationships to state authority in the Siin province (Senegal). I engage with classic literature to examine how the concept of ‘peasant’ might be relevant to archaeological realities in Senegal’s countryside during the Atlantic era, and how it might helpful to think about political identity among social actors chronically understudied (and under-documented) in the African past. I am interested in the term as one way to conceptualize the...
What’s in a Label? Archaeological Taxonomies and Social Processes Past and Present (2015)
The Banda area of west central Ghana is a quintessential example of what Igor Kopytoff (1987) long-ago dubbed the Internal African Frontier—an ‘interstitial’ region between ‘established societies’ that is home to a dynamic composition of people, languages and practice forged by newcomers and autochthones alike. In presumed contrast with their ‘established’ neighbors, frontier societies are ones in which processes of improvisation and the negotiation of social boundaries seem more apparent. While...
Where's your Mummy? The Business of Mummification in Late and Roman Period Egypt (2015)
It is often said that the practice of mummification became a veritable business during the Late and Roman periods, when it was extended to include not only the elite, but also those on the lower end of the status scale. The increase in the number of bodies being embalmed led to the widespread adoption of more expeditious techniques, sometimes resulting in mummies that, though outwardly pleasing in appearance, concealed nothing but a jumbled mess of bones beneath their wrappings. The non-elite...
Who Wants to Live Forever? The Practice of Mass Human Sacrifice During Early State Formation in the Nubian Classic Kerma Period (2015)
As the ancient Nubian Classic Kerma kings undertook military campaigns into Egyptian territory (1700-1550 BCE), their mortuary practices grew to include mass inhumation of their subjects within their burial tumuli. The tumulus of the second Classic Kerma king (KX) contains over 300 human sacrifices and is the largest group found at the site. The sacrificed Kermans were arranged in the tumulus corridor alongside Egyptian statues taken as spoils of war, emphasizing the king’s control of internal...