AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (520 Records)
The study of the ancient cultural history of northern Ethiopia, modern Tigray, often includes an interpretation of the obvious connections with the Arabian Peninsula, to the east, and the Nile Valley to the west. Less attention is usually given to contacts with the African heartland, to the south, and the relatively arid region between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, usually referred to as the Eastern Desert, to the north. The cultural connections with the latter are reflected in linguistic and...
Cultural survivals and social memories. (2015)
Cultural survivals should ordinarily be thought of as anthropogenic in nature as they generally result from the conscious and unconscious influence of humans on their natural environment in an attempt to respond to the cultural, historical, spiritual and environmental challenges facing them. To this extent, the Rock engravings on the Omutedo Rock shelter located along the Ijebu-Igbo highway in Ogun state; south western Nigeria has carved a pathway in the way the present inhabitants think about...
Cultures and Societies of Africa (1960)
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.
Dating and Context of Rock Engravings in Southern Africa (1979)
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.
Dating the Early Stone Age site of Isimila, Tanzania. (2015)
The Early Stone Age (ESA) site of Isimila is located on the Iringa plateau, Tanzania, close to the East African Rift Valley. Due to the abundance of handaxes present at the site in both primary and secondary contexts, Isimila has long been recognised as a key site of international importance for understanding the behavioural complexity of our hominin ancestors often compared alongside major East African e.g. Kalambo Falls, Olduvai Gorge and Olorgesailie (Kleindienst and Keller 1976; Mcbrearty...
Death at Birth: Changing Mortuary Practices from the Late Ptolemaic to the Romano-Christian Period in Egypt (2015)
Human burials and mortuary practices are the result of cultural attitudes and ideological beliefs that have been selected and shaped by the living for the dead. These beliefs and concomitant mortuary practices have changed through time, thus the treatment, space, and place for the dead varies, particularly in the context of the very young. While it is likely that adults were given the opportunity to make decisions about their own place of burial, treatment of the body, or grave assemblage, in...
Death from Above: Using Remote Sensing Data to Examine Mortuary Landscapes along the Nile 4th Cataract (2015)
The Bioarchaeology of Nubia Expedition project area stretches for over 30 kilometers along the right bank of the Nile in northern Sudan, from the modern village of Abu Tin at the top of the Great Bend west to the area across from Shemkhiya. Many of the numerous archaeological resources located within the concession have principal funerary components from multiple time periods, and their placement in the landscape with regard to specific topographic and environmental features is difficult to...
Death on the Middle Nile: Mortuary Traditions and Identity at the Top of the Great Bend (2015)
Our understanding of ancient Nubian mortuary traditions principally derives from monumental elite cemeteries such as Kerma, El-Kurru, and Meroe and the 1960s salvage excavations in Lower Nubia. More recent work in Upper Nubia, in northern Sudan, however, has revealed substantial regional variation. Assessment of habitation, rock art, and cemetery sites from the Mesolithic through Christian periods in the Bioarchaeology of Nubia Expedition (BONE) project area on the right (north) bank of the Nile...
Decline, Collapse, and Regeneration of the State in 16th-Century Bunyoro (Uganda): A Diachronic Archaeological Perspective on Ritual and the Negotiation of Creative Power (2017)
Historical research by David Schoenbrun has identified the arrival of a new ruling dynasty in the 16th century as a pivotal moment when instrumental power was decoupled from creative power in Bunyoro. Unlike previous rulers in Bunyoro, the new Bito kings were not healers and spirit-mediums. New state rituals developed both in new places and at pre-existing shrines, as is evident from historical and ethnographic sources. Archaeological investigations at known shrines and other sites, all of which...
DECODING THE SWAHILI: ANCIENT DNA STUDIES ON THE KENYAN COAST (2015)
Our project examines the role of migration in the development of the large autonomous Swahili towns and city-states that grew out of small fishing, agrarian, and pastoral settlements on the East African coast in the late first millennium CE. Our sample is comprised of 97 individuals from three sites on the Kenya coast: Mtwapa (N=72; 900-1732 BCE) near Mombasa, and two sites in the Lamu archipelago, Manda (N=16; 800-1400 BCE), and Shanga (N=9; 800-1400 BCE). The teeth were well preserved and...
Decoration As Ritual Symbol: a Theoretical Proposal and an Ethnographic Study in Southern Sudan. In: Symbolic and Sructural Archaeology (1982)
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.
Deep Histories from Shallow Sites: Archaeological Investigations of Later Sites in Eastern Djibouti (2017)
Today, the Afar Region of East Africa is known for barren landscapes and some of the hottest average temperatures in the world. However, archaeological and climatological evidence suggests that over the last 3 million years the region has also exhibited temperate Savanna climes. This paper presents new archaeological data that chronicles the Oldowan through Islamic periods at the eastern edge of the Rift Valley. It begins the project of describing how deep historical processes intersected...
Density, Discard and Distraction: How Do We Form Inferences of Behavior from the Early Pleistocene Record (2017)
The discovery and excavation of dense patches of lithic artifacts has spurred discussion about how such features form. Interpretations are often based around the assumption that these reflect locations of targeted hominin use. Despite their assumed significance, there remains the possibility that high density scatters may reflect the vagaries of the formation processes of the Early Pleistocene archaeological record. Here we use a neutral model of the formation of the archaeological record to...
Development of Craft Specialization during the Pre-Aksumite Period in Eastern Tigrai, Ethiopia: Insights from Modern Hide-Workers (2017)
The pre-Aksumite period in Eastern Tigrai witnessed social and economic changes that have been traditionally attributed to the impacts ofexternal influences, in particular the Sabaeans. Recent studies are exploring internal or indigenous factors influencing the development of economies and early social inequality/complexity in the northern Horn. One such factor may have been the local development of craft specialists to cope with increasing demands for certain goods, such as hides. The export...
Dietary and Environmental Reconstruction with Stable Isotopes of Early, Middle and Late Holocene Humans from Northern Malawi (2018)
The early Holocene African humid period (AHP, ~12,000-6000 bp) was followed by the Middle Holocene dry phase (MHDP, ~6000-3500 BP), and the modern climatic regime was established during the later Holocene (~3500 bp to present). The relationship of environmental change to human social and territorial organization adaptations are fairly well-documented in northern, eastern and southern Africa. However, the Holocene terrestrial record of environmental change in east-central Africa is poorly...
Disconnection Between Power & Rank As a Processs: An Outl. of the Development of Kingdoms in C. Madagasca. In: the Evolution of Social Systems (1978)
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.
Discovering the trick to flaking Middle Stone Age tools on quartzite (2015)
South African Middle Stone Age tool makers were skilled at the production of fine, symmetric points and blades on quartzite, a material that is known for its toughness and durability but not for its ease of flaking. The accurate replication of MSA tools on quartzite proved to be almost impossible during a replication and experimentation program that spanned over ten years. Heat treatment was the ‘trick’ that unlocked the potential of silcrete and it became clear that there must also be a trick...
Discrete Traits, Cranial Measurements, and Non-Biological Data in Africa (1974)
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.
Divining By Familiar Spirits Among the Amazulu. In: Reader in Comparative Religion: an Anthropological Approach - 2nd Edition (1965)
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.
Divining the Past: The Canopic Jar Project is using genetics, chemistry and imaging to illuminate ancient Egyptian health and culture. (2016)
Whilst ancient Egyptian mummies have been the main focus of research for centuries, ancient Egyptian canopic jars, and their intestinal contents, have been widely neglected. The aim of the Canopic Jar Project is to establish novel research procedures and to examine a larger series of ancient Egyptian human soft tissues samples with a range of medical, genetic, chemical and Egyptological techniques. In the pilot phase of the project, canopics from different time periods were studied...
Drinking the Diaspora: An Archaeological Investigation into the Maintenance of Traditional Tigrayan Brewing Practices by Emigrant Ethiopians in British Columbia, Canada (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beer: that malty, effervescent drink has been brewing alongside humanity since before written records. Humans today are just as interested in making and consuming beer as they have been in the ancient past. For some people today, beer can serve the same function as it has in the past, being an extra source of calories and...
Dungeons and Virtual Tours: Preserving the Mazmorras of Tetouan, Morocco (2016)
New and economical methods of digital preservation have enabled archaeologists to both protect and increase public access to threatened heritage sites. Recent plans to rehabilitate a long sealed but structurally threatened subterranean dungeon associated with Christian slavery, The Mazmorras of Tetouan, Morocco, provided an ideal location to integrate cost-effective methods of digital preservation with municipal restoration proposals. The creation of an online virtual tour with moderately priced...
The Earlier Stone Age Occupation of Wonderwerk Cave: Combining the Archaeology and Geology (2015)
The archaeology and geology of the Earlier Stone Age of Wondewerk Cave (Northern Cape Province, South Africa) present a paradoxical picture. On the one hand there is a record of hominin occupation spanning a period of at least one million year that includes multiple proxies indicating the use of fire. However, the micromorphological study of the sediment shows almost no anthropogenic signal and the density of artifacts is extraordinarily low. This paper presents an overview of the current...
The Early Egyptian State (2016)
Of all the ancient states, the concept of heterarchy would seem to be least applicable to ancient Egypt.There, according to traditional interpretations, successive polities in the 3rd Millennium BC successfully monopolized power and authority by means of increasingly elaborate and hierarchically- arranged administrative structures and functions. But recent analyses and evidence suggest that state did not maintain absolute control at all times and in all areas of the state, particularly with...
Early Farming Communities in East Africa and the Horn: new zooarchaeological evidence from Mezber, northern Ethiopia (2017)
Animal herding formed a central component of pre-Aksumite (>800 B.C.E – 450 B.C.E) and Aksumite (450 B.C.E-800 C.E.) subsistence economies in the North Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands. Despite this, detailed understanding of animal utilization and diversity of species is lacking for this period. New data on species abundance and radiocarbon date from the site of Mezber in the North Ethiopian highland throws a new light on the earliest mixed farming communities in the Horn of Africa over the...