AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (520 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.
Early Human-Environment Dynamics on the Southwest Coast of Madagascar (2015)
This paper discusses early occupations of the southwest coast of Madagascar and the impact that human subsistence practices may have had on the highly endemic spiny forest biome. A major transformation of Madagascar’s environment post-human arrival is the extinction of a suite of mega fauna species. Ongoing work on the spread of domesticates throughout the western Indian Ocean will certainly improve our understanding of Madagascar’s settlement history, but little is known to-date about the...
Early iron production in Sudan (2017)
Since 2012 archaeometallurgical investigations have been undertaken at the Royal City of Meroe, a capital of the Kingdom of Kush situated c. 250 km north of modern day Khartoum, Sudan. During the research, a chronological history of iron production at this site has been generated that spans at least one thousand years. Insights into various stages of the chaîne opératoire of iron production have also been revealed, including the location and techniques of iron ore extraction, the procurement of...
Early Pleistocene Behavior and Archaeological Inference: Insights from Experiments (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of human origins represents one of the key insights into what it means to be human. Despite this optimistic outlook, the archaeological record represents a dismally preserved record of untranslated objects. Archaeologists have become increasingly good at devising stories about the records of behaviors that our artifacts represent. However,...
Early Stone Age hominin habitat preferences: predictions from a modern taphonomic and ecological study in Kenya (2017)
Two key resources that would have conditioned hominin behavior and habitat preferences in the Early Stone Age of Africa are food and water. This talk presents an examination of spatial relationships of these resources from a modern taphonomic and ecological study of large mammal carcasses at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya. The locations of fresh carnivore kills and older bone scatters that still retained within-bone nutrients (marrow and brains) are examined to determine whether these dietary...
Early Worked Ochre in the Middle Pleistocene at Olorgesailie, Kenya (2016)
Excavation of the Middle Stone Age site of GOK-1 at Olorgesailie (2001-2011) yielded two pieces of iron-rich rock from a well-developed red soil below a tuff dated to 220 ka. The soil’s stratigraphic position in the G locality and the associated lithics suggest it is more comparable to the some of the earliest Middle Stone Age sites in nearby Locality B, which date to over 300 ka. The larger rock exhibits grinding striations exposing powdery red pigment. Furthermore, an incomplete perforation...
Earthen dwellings from Banda, Ghana: Geoarchaeological analyses of archaeological and modern structures (2016)
West African earthen architecture is among the most elaborated in the world as recognized by the World Heritage site status of Asante buildings at Kumasi. However, its history is poorly known. This study begins to redress this gap by employing bulk sediment analyses and soil micromorphology to characterize building remains recovered at the Ngre Kataa site, in Banda, Ghana and a contemporary earthen compound in the region. The study was conducted in tandem with archaeological and...
East African MSA: regionalisation and variability (2016)
The Late Pleistocene is a central period in the story of human origin, being associated with the spread of modern humans within and Out of Africa. While fossils and genetics provide the evolutionary setting for the origin of our species, stone tools are often the only archaeological remain attesting of Early Modern Human behavior, and constitute the bulk of the evidence on hominin behavioural variability. East Africa encompasses ∼3.6 million km² including a large variety of biomes. Sites are...
Economic Changes through Time along the Tanzanian Swahili Coast, as Seen through the Examination of Non-Ferrous Metals and Metallurgical Technologies (2016)
Historic Swahili towns along the East African coast played prominent roles in the triangular Indian Ocean maritime trade linking East Africa with India and the Persian Gulf/Red Sea, but their impact and the extent of economic changes through time at these towns are still poorly understood. Examining non-ferrous metals, many of which were imported and reworked locally, can serve as a proxy to understand the impact of Indian Ocean trade on local economies, particularly with regard to the...
Economies and Identities in Flux: Consequences of the Arrival of Specialized Fulani Pastoralists in Mali’s Inland Niger Delta (2015)
In the Sahel, the Fulani are considered the archetypal cattle herders. Although their spread across West Africa is poorly understood, their arrival had profound effects on local populations. In Mali’s Inland Niger Delta, historical sources and isotopic analysis of archaeological cattle, sheep, and goat teeth from the site of Jenné-jeno and the modern town of Djenné suggest that specialized Fulani pastoralists arrived in the Delta between the 13th and 15th centuries AD. This coincided with...
Effects of Socioeconomic Change in Prehistoric Africa: Sudancese Nubia As a Case Study. In: Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (1984)
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.
The Elite Meroitic Necropolis of Sai Island Part I: Mortuary Interpretations (2017)
Sai Island, located in northern Sudan between the 2nd and 3rd Nile cataracts, boasts a rich archaeological history spanning from the Paleolithic to modern times. Recent archaeological excavations conducted by the French Unit of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums have focused on a small elite Meroitic necropolis (300BC-350AD). Similar to other fringe elite Meroitic cemeteries such as Sedeinga, the Sai Island cemetery features pyramid mortuary structures with descendaries...
The Elite Meroitic Necropolis of Sai Island, Part II: Bioarchaeological Interpretations (2017)
Five Meroitic necropoli have been identified on Sai Island, located in northern Sudan between the 2nd and 3rd Nile cataracts. Recent archaeological excavations conducted by the French Unit of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums have focused on a small elite Meroitic necropolis (300BC-350AD). Although the archaeology of this necropolis is complicated by interments from other periods and looting, here we present the initial analyses of the Meroitic elite skeletal remains in...
Empire, Environment and Disease: an Indian Ocean Case Study. (2017)
Between 1855-59, the island of Mauritius, with a landmass of only 2040 km2, was producing 10% of the world’s sugar: a staggering testimony to the power of imperial influence on ecology. The transformations that this intensification in cane production resulted in were far reaching. One facet that remains poorly understood is the context of disease, despite a well-developed historical narrative . This paper presents details of a series of malaria epidemics that plagued the island from the 1850s...
Employing Bayesian Probability Theory to Diverse Applications Relevant to Archaeology (2018)
The principle of equifinality describes a system where an end state may be reached from a variety of conditions and in a variety of ways and has proved to be a confounding element in several areas in archaeology. Archaeological data commonly occur in both qualitative and quantitative form and Bayesian modeling, coupled with modern computational routines, permits multiple data types to be incorporated into a single synthetic probability model. The Bayesian approach makes probability statements...
Endangered Archaeology in Arid Lands: Remote Sensing and Heritage Management (2017)
The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa Project (EAMENA) uses satellite imagery to record damage and threats to the heritage of the MENA region. We are recording these data in an open-access database to create a useful platform for the management and protection of heritage in these countries. A remote-sensing approach to heritage management has many advantages and is particularly effective in the arid MENA region due to limited vegetation and development. The availability...
Enslaved Christian Captives in Early Modern North Africa: Resolving Historical Contentions Through Archaeology (2017)
Establishing estimates of European Christians enslaved in North Africa during the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) is highly contested among scholars. On one hand, historian Robert Davis argues that more than a million Europeans were captured, enslaved, and left unransomed in North Africa in the Early Modern period. On the other hand, Nabil Matar suggests that both the historical accounts and Davis’ estimates are exaggerated, in part because of a lack of physical evidence and the ambiguous...
Entangled Lives: Intercultural Interactions in the Nubian Borderland (2017)
Anthropological theories of cultural interaction, in particular entanglement, can help shed light on how individual choices drove intercultural interaction between Egypts and Nubias in the context of a colonial borderland. This paper explores how recent archaeological work in Nubia is breaking the simple Egyptian-Nubian dichotomy that has characterized previous discussions of interactions between the two African cultures. Taking their cue from Egyptian ideology, Egyptologists have often depicted...
Environmental Conditions of Northwestern Zimbabwe during the Transition from Foraging to Farming: Using Isotopes, Sediments, and Soils to Reconstruct Late Holocene Climate Change in Hwange National Park (2015)
Hunting-and-gathering in northwestern Zimbabwe was largely replaced by pastoralism and farming between ca. 2,000 and 1,200 years ago. In order to understand whether climate change influenced this transition, we collected environmental and archaeological data during a multi-year research program that included: rockshelter excavation, salvage excavation along eroding stream cuts, and geomorphological and soils analyses of various locales in Hwange National Park. The strontium, carbon, and oxygen...
Environmental implications of marine bird remains in the late Holocene of Pinnacle Point. (2015)
Marine bird remains are common in late Holocene coastal sites in South Africa. The Pinnacle Point Shell Midden Complex (PPSMC) is such a site. Marine bird remains from the PPSMC were studied to better understand their role in the foraging and mobility patterns of late Holocene stone age people on the Mossel Bay coast. The PPSMC has four separate excavation areas and marine bird remains are present and were studied in each. Microscopic analyses for signs of surface modification proved to be...
Equity, Access, and the Privilege of “Best Practice” in Archaeological Fieldwork (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Developing Paleolithic Excavation Methods for the Twenty-First Century" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technological advances in digital imagery, field recording, and mapping have transformed the ability of archaeologists to rapidly collect, store, and analyze large quantities of high-resolution field data. In spite of steadily lowering prices and broader consumer accessibility over the years, the costs associated...
Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology: Introduction (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology throughout the African continent in the last few decades has provided important insights into questions that are relevant to archaeology worldwide. Yet, these new theoretical perspectives and datasets have not been widely incorporated into scholarship elsewhere in the world, perhaps a latent effect of lingering...
Ethiopia's Peripatetic Royal Capitals and Prospects for Their Study (2016)
From the 13th to 17th centuries, emperors of Ethiopia, attended by the royal court, largely abandoned rule from fixed capitals in favor of a migratory lifestyle suited to projecting imperial power across an unruly collection of subjugated states and territories. At its peak, this system of administration was formalized into a highly regulated assembly of people with the visual and functional attributes of a royal urban center, though it lacked the spatial permanency of a conventional city. The...
An ethnoarchaeological approach to exploring the development of hideworking traditions in Ethiopia (2016)
Presented are the results of an ethnoarchaeological study of hide working traditions among the Wolayta peoples of southern Ethiopia. This research is part of a larger study that aims at tracing the development of social complexity/inequality occurring during the pre-Aksumite period (>800-450 BCE) in eastern Tigrai through studying the emergence of craft specialization of hideworking traditions. The processing and trading of hides has a long history in Ethiopia. The export and local trading of...
An Ethnoarchaeological Approach to Traditional Farmer Knowledge and Fire Ecology in Eastern Tigrai, Northern Ethiopia (2017)
This study will conduct ethnoarchaeological interviews of Eastern Tigrai rural consultants on traditional farmer knowledge, risk management and fire ecology. The data will enable the integration of farmer knowledge within an historical ecology framework to understand human-environment interactions taking place during the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (>800 BCE- CE 700). A previous palaeoenvironmental study examined extensive charcoalized wood and burned matter in the region, however an...