AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Müller. Philip Staudigel. Sean Murray. Hildegard Westphal. Peter Swart.

The analysis of geochemical proxies in skeletal remains has become a standard tool in shell midden research. Sub-seasonally resolved proxy records provide information about environmental and anthropological aspects such as ancient climate conditions, fishing and foraging seasonality or site occupation pattern. However, as subsistence was the primary purpose for fishing activities in most prehistoric cultures, it is likely that many shell midden constituents were subjected to processing methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Ambrose. Andrew Zipkin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ostrich eggshell (OES) is widely used for environmental reconstruction with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen isotopes, and radiocarbon dating. Strontium isotope ratios of OES artifacts can be used to reconstruct object biography, human mobility, and interaction networks. OES can provide an isotopic baseline for reconstructing past environments and provenience of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dil Basanti.

Aksum was the capital of northern Ethiopian kingdom that is famous for its numerous pre-Christian funerary stelae dating to the first four centuries A.D. The six largest stelae employ a peculiar "house" symbolism carved into their surfaces. Art historians have also noted that later Christian churches in the Ethiopian highlands, also sites for burial, mimic the layouts of old Aksumite elite houses. Beyond this, there has been little serious interpretation on what the "house" symbolism indicates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Dunnavant.

In 1896 Emperor Menelik II of Abyssinia engaged in one of the bloodiest battles of his military campaigns, attempting to unseat King Tona of Wolaita. After two weeks of fighting, King Tona was captured and the royal court devastated. The last palace of the Wolaita Kingdom stood in Dalbo just 10 kilometers northeast of the current city of Soddo. While the general location of King Tona’s palace is known, contesting narratives situate the exact location at different sites. This paper reports on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rahul Oka.

There have been multiple advances in recent approaches to modeling within archaeology. The power of advanced computational techniques including agent-based modeling, Bayesian approaches, etc., have enabled archaeologists to hypothesize and describe complex multi-scalar processes affecting past societies, while paying heed to multiplicity of variable factors. However, while anthropological archaeologists reject models within economics and political science as "data-poor," recent archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dr. Kathryn Arthur.

This paper focuses on the relationship between material culture and living peoples as constructed through an African perspective of what it means to be in existence- ontology. It is critical that we precedent descendant theories of the human and nonhuman world to produce meaningful narratives of the past, to avoid alienation and ethnocentrism. The Borada-Gamo of southern Ethiopia offers that their worldview enlightens their knowledge of technology. Material culture as spiritually animated has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinzia Perlingieri. Habtamu Mekonnen. Michael Harrower.

This paper provides an overview of the methods and results of the ceramic analysis conducted in two study seasons at the archaeological site of Baita Semati, in northern Ethiopia. The work was articulated into three main steps: 1) analytical description of the morphological attributes, 2) typological classification, 3) chronological and cultural interpretation and comparisons. Our goal was to create rich records for all pottery objects that would include standardized descriptions, typological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Douglass. George Manahira. Roger Samba. Voahirana Vavisoa. Felicia Fenomanana.

Since 2011 the Morombe Archaeological Project has undertaken archaeological survey, excavation and oral history recording in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area of southwest Madagascar. The project’s aims are to investigate diachronic human-environment dynamics and refine our understanding of the region’s settlement history by leveraging multiple scientific techniques and the collective historical and socio-ecological knowledge base of Velondriake’s living communities. The project is run by a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisabeth Cornelissen. Alexandre Livingstone-Smith. Nils Bourland. Wannes Hubau. Florias Mees.

Heavy vegetation cover presents obvious difficulties in conducting archaeological survey in the Central African rainforests. Survey conducted in 2010 and 2013 along the Congo River and its tributaries, between Bumba and Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo, centered on using rivers as a means of access into dense forests.The results indicated that the region's archaeological record consists primarily of pottery finds associated with old soil horizons or pottery arranged in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcos Martinez. Alexandra Greenwald. Jelmer Eerkens. Alex de Voogt. Vincent Francigny.

We examine inter- and intra-individual variation in diet among high-status individuals from an agro-pastoralist Meroitic burial population interred on Sai Island in modern Sudan. We use stable isotope data (δ13C and δ15N) from dentinal collagen, extracted from serial micro-sections of third molars, to reconstruct the diet of 10 individuals. We employ MixSIAR, a hierarchical Bayesian model for estimating isotopic mixing, along with a previously constructed isotopic food-web to reconstruct human...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Chloe Daniel. Shelby Putt. Robert Franciscus.

Homo sapiens is the only primate species that currently displays a population level preference for right hand dominance. Previous studies have attempted to establish methodologies to determine handedness from stone tool debris because of the link between handedness and brain lateralization of the classic language centers, and its implications for the evolution of language. However, these experimental studies have produced varied results, and it is questionable whether handedness can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Magnus Haaland. Christopher Miller. Christopher Henshilwood.

Archaeological material, for example engraved ochre and bone, shell beads, bone tools, and bifacial points recovered from the Middle Stone Age levels (c. 101–70 ka BP) at Blombos Cave (BBC), South Africa, is central to our current understanding of the technological and cultural development of early modern humans in southern Africa during the Late Pleistocene. While these artefacts have attracted much attention for their behavioral implications, the sedimentary context in which they were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Louise Iles.

Participation in technological activity in sub-Saharan Africa is often discussed in terms of identity, whether that is framed by gender, kinship, status or ethnicity. In particular, social distinctions between iron producers and iron users are well known from the ethnohistorical and ethnographic records of numerous African regions, providing important information as to the social organisation and values of a particular society. However, recognising these identities in the archaeological remains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Thompson.

This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no consensus about how to define the first paleoarchaeological record, or how old it is. An assemblage of flaked stone artifacts from Lomekwi 3, Kenya, dates to 3.3 million years ago. Two fossil specimens at the 3.34-million-year-old site of Dikika-55, Ethiopia, preserve butchery marks on their surfaces. The strength of interpretation that these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheila Nightingale. Jessica Thompson. Alex Mackay. Flora Schilt. Elizabeth Gomani-Chindebvu.

Interpretations of specialized lithic technologies are based in part on the assumption that environmental change modifies local carrying capacities and requires foragers to adjust their resource acquisition strategies in response. Such models often account for innovation, in the form of specialized, standardized, and increasingly complex tool forms and foraging strategies, in environmental terms: environmental pressure produces demand for innovation, and when pressure subsides, technological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Boivin. Mary Prendergast. Jillian Swift. Ceri Shipton. Alison Crowther.

Until recently, the small islands lying off the coasts of Tanzania and Kenya have seen little systematic archaeological investigation. Their biogeographic diversity, reflecting various processes and chronologies of formation, nonetheless offers an ideal opportunity to examine processes of prehistoric colonization and anthropogenic impact.We explore the earliest evidence for human activity on three different islands, Pemba, Zanzibar and Mafia, and provide the first evidence for early human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith C. Sealy. Nikolaas J. van der Merwe.

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 William Y. Adams.

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 Brian M. Fagan.

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 Lynn Brenda Harris.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Port of Call: Archaeologies of Labor and Movement through Ports", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Simon’s Town, in South Africa, served as naval port and harbor first for the British and later for the South African Navy. Cultural connections to other parts of Africa, United States, and the Far East are an equally important part of the historical narrative and naval identity of the False Bay. Kroomen from West...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Fincham.

The Federal Government has taken a more active approach to the illicit trade in looted and stolen antiquities. In some cases this Federal role has produced increased awareness and produced some notable seizures and returns. However the Federal intervention in a dispute between Egypt and the St. Louis Art Museum over an ancient Egyptian mask known as the Ka Nefer Nefer offers a cautionary tale. The Museum purchased the mask in 1998, after a cursory examination of the object's history. Egypt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only P. T. W. Baxter.

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 Kathryn Arthur.

The Gamo, who live in the highlands on the edge of the southern Ethiopian rift valley, are known for their unique and beautiful household architecture. Tourists ogle their oval basket-like grass houses and peer inside for mere minutes hoping to observe some secret moment or practice previously unknown to them. Similarly many archaeologists long to feel beneath their trowels a widespread hard surface indicative of a house floor. We remove the tangible aspects of the home, bit by bit, hoping to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Colson.

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 Ryan Szymanski.

Archaeological evidence from numerous sites throughout Western Kenya show that the Iron Age was a time of considerable environmental and cultural change in this region. A short sediment core derived from lower Kingwal Swamp was collected and analyzed for its microbotanical, fungal, and charcoal content with the goal of clarifying the duration, context, and extent of these changes as visible through landscape modification. These sediments capture approximately the last 1800 years of ecological...