AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (520 Records)
Lithic miniaturization, the systematic production and use of small tools from small cores, was a consequential development in Pleistocene lithic technology. Bipolar reduction is an important but often overlooked and misidentified strategy for lithic miniaturization. This experiment addresses the role of axial bipolar reduction in processes of lithic miniaturization. The experiments answer two questions: what benefits does axial bipolar reduction provide, and can we distinguish axial bipolar...
The Blind Spot: An Early Later Stone Age perspective on the Agulhas Bank from Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1, South Africa (2015)
The exposure of the wide continental shelf of the Agulhas Bank during the gradual regression of the shoreline from 45,000 years ago, culminating in the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), opened up a vast new area for foragers. Humans with well-established coastal resource exploitation strategies would have naturally shifted their foraging range to the south, following the regressing shoreline. During this period, the South African technological record underwent a critical transition from the prepared...
Boko Haram, coupeurs de route and slave-raiding: identities and violence in a Central African borderland (2015)
To this point, most analyses of Boko Haram have stressed its origins in Salafi/Wahhabi radicalism in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. Equally important to the development of this organisation, however, has been its utilisation of frontier zones in the Lake Chad Basin, as refuges and areas for the development of political and military power. In this paper, I will argue that aspects of Boko Haram activities can be profitably understood through the deep-time...
Bone and Antler Organic Pressure Flakers (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bone has been used as a raw material for a range of activities for at least two million years. The criteria for determining whether a bone was used—or shaped and then used—have been established by archaeologists following decades of experimental research. In contrast, the antiquity of using bone for pressure flaking stone is less well...
Bosutswe Landscapes: Defining African Complexity through Spatial Archaeometry (2015)
This multi-component project addresses how societies in Iron-Age Botswana (550-1650 CE) experienced the change from small, rural-centered life to centralized power based on increasing involvement in trade across the Indian Ocean. How this change occurred remains a central focus, with increasing pressures on the environment in this desert-margin landscape a likely contributing factor. It features the Bosutswe region, situated on the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert, where the site of Bosutswe...
Boundaries and Networks on the 19th Century Bras d’Eau Sugar Estate (2015)
This paper discusses research on the most complete and well-preserved 18th and 19th century sugar estate on Mauritius and how communities and identities were constituted under the conflicting conditions of both physical control and local/regional connectivity. Established in 1786, the Bras d’Eau Sugar Estate (now a national park) grew in the following century when the island shifted from French to British colonial rule. The slave trade and the institution of slavery were later abolished across...
Bringing the Mountain to the Mara: The role of obsidian quarrying on Mt. Eburru in structuring early pastoralist socio-economic identities in southern Kenya. (2015)
Despite recent advances in characterizing the socio-economic mosaics associated with early pastoralism in East Africa, how this diversity affected social boundaries and manifested identities remain underexplored. Exclusive exploitation of a single obsidian source on the upper slopes of Mr. Eburru in the Central Rift Valley by communities associated with "Elmenteitan" material culture is a strong line of evidence for dimensions of shared identity linking some of these herding communities in...
Building a better eggtimer: Amino acid dating of ostrich eggshell from South Africa (2015)
Chronology underpins our understanding of the past, but beyond the limit of radiocarbon dating (~50 ka), sites become more difficult to date. Amino acid geochronology, which uses the time-dependent breakdown of proteins in biominerals, has the potential to date the whole of the Quaternary. Ostrich eggshell (OES) is often associated with archaeological sites in Africa, as early humans utilised them as a food source, water carriers and for artistic purposes. OES’s calcitic structure potentially...
Building a Network: Territorialisation and Deterritorialisation in 13th Century northern South Africa (2017)
Regional social complexity in southern Africa is closely tied to the rise and development of the Mapungubwe polity of 13th century South Africa. Expanding political power and influence meant that Mapungubwe increasingly articulated with communities on its periphery - a relationship that is reflected in shared material culture. These hinterland sites are all located in areas where there is an absence of earlier twelfth century occupation, which suggests a process of active settling of these areas...
Burning Forests of the Past in Eastern Tigrai (2017)
The influences of Ethiopia's palaeoenvironments on its past societies may inform land management practices now. A staple for reconstructing palaeoenvironments is to record palaeovegetation changes. Botanical remains for reconstructing palaeovegetation are usually archived in lake sediments. Eastern Tigrai had the most developed ancient civilizations known to sub-Saharan Africa but no lakes. When we began research in Eastern Tigrai, the region had been deforested for so long that botanists...
Bushmen and Other Non-Bantu Peoples of Angola (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.
The Butana Group in Comparison with the Predynastic and Late Neolithic Groups in the Nile Valley and Adjacent Areas of the Sahel and Sahara: A Look at How Ceramics Can be Used to Differentiate Socioeconomic, Ethnic, and Political Differences (2015)
Various ceramic-bearing groups occupied and settled in the Nile Valley during the end of the 5th millennium BC and through the 4th millennium BC, ranging from hunter-gatherers, agro-pastoralists, agriculturalists, and finally to state level societies. Some of these groups appear to have been involved with intergroup trade and cooperation at various levels, while others were not. This paper will look into the characteristic traits associated with these groups in northeast Africa and how their...
Can we talk about modern human behavior in non-Homo sapiens? (2018)
Discerning what makes Homo sapiens distinctive among the rest of the species on the planet has been a difficult task. One suggestion has been our use of symbolic culture, the use and transmission of symbols intergenerationally. There is much discussion, however, about who the first ‘symbol users’ were, partly due to debates as to what actually makes something ‘symbolic.’ In this paper, I discus how anthropologists first came to use symbol as the sine qua non of modern human behavior. Then, using...
Cautionary tales in the use of captive carnivore tooth mark data (2017)
Evidence for hominin meat acquisition in the form of butchery marks on fossil animal bones dates back to at least 2.6 million years ago. With this new dietary behavior came competition between hominins and large carnivores for animal carcasses. Identifying which carnivores hominins were interacting with would allow various models of the timing and sequence of hominin and carnivore carcass to be evaluated. However, many studies of carnivore tooth marking and damage patterns are conducted with...
Cave Life Histories of non-anthropogenic Sediments helps us "raise the bar" in our understandings of anthropogenic Sediments (2015)
A series of sea caves and rock shelters with strong anthropogenic contributions are found at Pinnacle Point (PP) near Mossel Bay in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Two of these (PP13B and PP5-6) have been the target of extensive archaeological excavation and both document anthropogenic and geogenic contributions waxing and waning over time. A variety of caves at PP do not bear anthropogenic remains, such as Staircase Cave and Crevice Cave. A third, PP29, is filled with sediment but...
The central African Middle Stone Age in context: Comparisons of technological adaptations (2016)
The Late Pleistocene Middle Stone Age (MSA) records of southern and northern Africa increasingly provide evidence for diversity in technological systems, with both exhibiting early examples of standardized stone tool production achieved through complex manufacturing sequences. This superficially implies a long-term trend toward greater complexity in MSA technology at a continental scale. However, within both regions, various lithic elements received different emphases over time and space –...
Ceramic Diversity and Political Centralization: a Case Study from Medieval North Africa (1985)
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.
Ceramic petrography, historical linguistics and the Bantu expansion: tracking the arrival of the first pottery-using peoples in northern Botswana (2015)
It may seem counterintuitive that colonists travelling substantial distances on foot into new territory should have carried ceramic vessels with them, but in some cases the evidence from ceramic petrography shows that they did. This case study examines the movements of the first pottery-using migrants into northern Botswana between the first and the fourth centuries CE. Southern Africa was the terminus of the long expansion of Bantu languages from their region of origin in present eastern...
Cereals and agricultural risk management in northern Sudan, past and present (2016)
Nubian agricultural practices are rapidly altering due to infrastructure development, as well as technological and environmental changes. We have been interviewing Nubian farmers about crop choices, land-use and irrigation. Farmer interviews have focused on a car- and electricity-free Nile island, Ernetta, where many 'traditional' practices have continued for a comparatively long time. We are also interviewing farmers in other villages throughout the north to understand variability. This...
Cereals and Ceramics: Another Look at the Late Neolithic Development of the Butana Group in Eastern Sudan during the 4th Millennium BC (2016)
This paper will discuss the new findings of domesticated sorghum along with the ceramics associated with the Butana Group at an archaeological site called, KG23. The Butana Group represents a cultural manifestation in the southern Atbai of the far eastern Sahel that dates around 3500-3000 BC, and was contemporary with other groups such as the Late Neolithic groups in the central Nile Valley, the pre-Kerma culture in Upper Nubia, the A-Group in Lower Nubia, and the Egyptian Predynastic cultures...
Checks On the Abuse of Political Power in Some African States: a Preliminary Framework for Analysis. In Comparative Political Systems (1967)
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.
Chemical Analysis of Chinese and other Lead Glass Beads from Songo Mnara, Tanzania (2015)
A number of potash lead silicate glass beads have been recovered from excavations at the 14th to 16th century Tanzanian site of Songo Mnara, a small but wealthy stone town on an island just south of Kilwa Kisiwani. LA-ICP-MS analysis has shown that two groups of Chinese beads are present, one that dates to the early 15th century, when Zheng He’s fleets visited the East Coast, and the other from around the turn of the 17th century when European glass beads began to be traded in that region. These...
Chemical Analysis of Fatty Acid Residues on Archaeological Pottery of Pastoralist Communities in Northern Tanzania (2016)
In the semiarid climate of eastern Africa, mobile cattle pastoralism has been an essential way of life for at least the past 5000 years (Prendergast et al. 2013). On the Mbulu Plateau of northern Tanzania, Dr. Grillo of UWLa Crosse has discovered the largest "Pastoral Neolithic" site in the country, which dates to about 3000 years ago. Based on the animal bones and ceramics found at the site, archaeologists believe the site was occupied by groups of mobile people who herded cows, goats and...
Chiefs’ Regalia and Recognition: An Unusual Example of Heritage Values and Political Agendas in Zimbabwe (2016)
Various regalia and practices for recognizing traditional chiefs were used to support political agendas for maintaining colonial rule in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia and, earlier, Southern Rhodesia) for over 120 years, becoming part of the country’s cultural heritage. After independence (1980), different political agendas of the new regime resulted in many of these practices no longer being utilized or emphasized. By 1999, with political opposition growing, the long-ruling regime adopted new...
Christian Life in Medieval Nubia at el-Kurru, Sudan (2017)
The Nubian site of el-Kurru (modern Sudan) lies along the Nile River about 140 km upstream of Old Dongola, the capital of the Medieval Christian kingdom of Makuria. In 2015-2016, a cemetery adjacent to the settlement was excavated, containing 26 skeletons. Here, I will present current bioarchaeological work on these individuals. Biological profiles were developed, including sex and age ranges, health markers evaluated, and indicators of pathology and trauma identified. Those interred span all...