AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)
351-375 (520 Records)
Current work at DKE and BKE in concert with The Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project (TOPPP) has exposed Bed I and Bed II deposits, respectively. At DKE a series of tuffs and siltstones, including paleosols, indicates DKE hosted a series of productive landscapes through time. Paleosols have well-developed blocky structure and host large concentrations of fossils. At BKE sandy fluvial deposits adjacent to siliceous siltstones confirm previous descriptions of site materials. Cultural...
Paleoenvironmental implications of Stable Isotope analyses of Micromammal teeth from Pinnacle Point (Mossel Bay, South Africa) (2015)
Paleoenvironmental proxies sample past environments at a number of geographic scales including regional, sub-regional, and local. Given species’ small home ranges and often-specific habitat requirements, isotopic data from micromammal fossil teeth are increasingly recognized as abundant potential reservoirs of local-scale paleoenvironmental proxy data. Elucidating differences between local and regional vegetation provides a context for understanding landscape-scale environmental variation,...
Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction using Fossil Phytolith Assemblages at Pinnacle Point caves 13B and 5/6 during Middle Stone Age, Mossel Bay, South Africa (2015)
Climatic conditions played a key role in the evolution of modern human linage and South Africa has been considered, based on genetics and fossil evidence, a suitable area. South Africa hosts the smallest of all-known biomes (Fynbos), characterized by hyper diversity with high species richness and large presence of edible plants. We present the phytolith record from the archaeological sites Pinnacle Point caves 13B and 5/6 spanning from ∼160 to ∼50 ka. This study aims at reconstructing the past...
Paleolithic Survey on the Upper Luangwa Valley, Zambia (2017)
The northern half of the Luangwa Valley, Zambia, a southern branch of the East African rift system, is archaeologically unexplored territory in an area that may have served as an important biogeographic corridor between eastern and southern Africa during the Plio-Pleistocene. This paper summarizes the first systematic survey in this region. Paleontological reconnaissance in 2013 incidentally revealed multiple Paleolithic sites which may range from the Acheulian through the MSA. Representative...
Parting the Late Pleistocene Red Sea : An Introduction to the Session and Region (2016)
The Late Pleistocene dispersal of Homo sapiens and “modern human behaviour” through and out of Africa has become a key issue in human evolutionary studies, largely as a result of intensive archaeological research in southern, and to a lesser extent east and northern Africa. In spite of its remarkably diverse environments, earliest Homo sapiens fossils and strategic location straddling the postulated “Northern” and “Southern” dispersal routes, the Horn of Africa...
Pastoral pathways to plant domestication: current evidence for African pearl millet and sorghum in comparative perspective (2015)
Recent archaeobotanical evidence has provided important, although limited evidence, for the steps on the domestication trajectory for Pearl Millet in western Africa (Mali, Mauretania) and Sorghum in eastern Africa (Sudan), during the middle Holocene (3000-1000 BC). Both were exploited by and domesticated by societies that in the Sahelian and northern Savannas, and practiced mobile herding alongside hunting and low-level cultivation, but full-scale agricultural dependence may not have emerged...
Patterns in Amino Acid Delta 15N Values of Lemurs Are Inconsistent with Aridity Driving Megafaunal Extinction in Southwestern Madagascar (2017)
Early human colonists of Madagascar encountered a diverse endemic fauna during the late Holocene that included elephant birds, pygmy hippos, and giant lemurs. All fauna >10 kg went extinct in the past 1,000-2,000 years. Direct human predation and anthropogenic landscape change help explain aspects of the extinction pattern. Increasing aridity may have also played a role in some regions, but its contribution remains controversial. We track changes in aridity during the past 4,000 years in...
Patterns of Hominin Land Use and Raw Material Procurement in the Paleo-Olduvai Basin, Tanzania (2017)
Suitable toolstone was a key affordance for Early Stone Age (ESA) populations across Africa. Northern Tanzania’s Olduvai Basin, because it contains numerous ESA archaeological localities and a variety of quartzitic outcrops, offers an excellent opportunity to evaluate the effect of raw material distribution on hominin landuse. While the lithology and mineralogy of these outcrops have been well described, their macroscopic similarities confound efforts to reliably determine the exact source of...
Patterns of Lithic Edge Damage from the Open-air Middle Stone Age Assemblages at Vleesbaai and Oyster Bay, South Africa (2015)
Much of our understanding of the South African Middle Stone Age (MSA) comes from deep sequences recovered from caves and rockshelters. These discreet, enclosed contexts represent one aspect of a foraging continuum; where many other activities take place on the continuous, open landscape. A different suite of taphonomic processes are also more likely to occur on open landscapes, complicating comparisons between site contexts. Developing meaningful inferences regarding past human behaviors...
Peering into the past Cape vegetation during the Last Glacial Maximum using species distribution modelling and dynamic global vegetation modelling (2015)
The Cape has a rich archaeological record that spans the Quaternary. Understanding shifts and changes of vegetation across this landscape will help to contextualise this record and understand the prehistoric resource paleoscape. In order to do this we couple high-resolution regionally downscaled climate simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum, landscape features (e.g. geology, aspect, slope) and two different approaches to modelling vegetation: species distribution modelling (SDM) and dynamic...
People and Palaeoclimates at the Diallowali Site Complex: Changing patterns along the Middle Senegal Valley throughout the 1st millennium BC (2017)
The first millennium BC was a time of considerable social, technological, and environmental change for the peoples of West Africa. Despite the growing number and distribution of archaeological projects throughout the region, very little is known about this critical period. Likewise, many of the climate models currently in use lack the sufficient temporal or spatial resolution needed to provide context for the variety of changes occurring at a localized level. Recent research at the Diallowali...
Petrography of "Nderit" pottery from Pastoral Neolithic sites surrounding Lake Turkana in Kenya (2015)
"Nderit" pottery is associated with the earliest pastoralists in eastern Africa, c. 4000-4500 bp. and is found at both settlement sites and ritual "pillar sites" surrounding Lake Turkana in northwestern Kenya. Several of the known megalithic "pillar sites" are large communal cemeteries and contain very large numbers of Nderit sherds, yet little research has been carried out on these ceramics in terms of their technology or provenance. Primary research questions concerning the early pastoralists...
The Petrology and Geochemistry of Ballast Stones- Evidence of Voyaging and Identity (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "The Underwater Archeology of a French Slave Ship In Northern Mozambique- L'Aurore", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper discusses novel techniques of geochemical analysis applied to ballast stones from the Ile de Mozambique Shipwreck (IDM-013) by Dr. Richard Palin of the Department of Geochemistry at Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences. Techniques, and implications for the presumed...
Pharaonic Power and Architectural Labor Investment at the Karnak Temple Complex, Egypt (2016)
Labor investment studies, based on the notion that the energy of people is quantifiable, give an invaluable and unique insight into the architectural pursuits of past societies. This labor study of ancient Egypt provides a better understanding of authority among Egyptian pharaohs as represented by their legacy of monumental architecture. A site of profound importance to Egyptian society was the Karnak Temple Complex, specifically the precinct of Amun, which was aggrandized by pharaonic...
Phytolith Processing Methods and the Affects upon Results (2015)
Biological microremains such as pollen, diatoms, starches, and phytoliths are invaluable data sources for reconstructing paleoenvironments and subsistence practices among human populations during times of technological transition. A primary goal of archaeological research is to use these remains to reconstruct the relationship between environment and technology. Phytoliths in particular allow us to reconstruct the specific flora that comprises the biome in a particular place and time....
Pinnacle Point 5-6 and Diepkloof Rockshelter (South Africa): Testing the OSL ages and constructing a standardised MSA chronology (2015)
Single grain optically stimulated luminescence (SG-OSL) dating has made a major contribution to our understanding of the chronology of the Middle Stone Age of Africa. The accuracy of many of the SG-OSL chronologies has been verified by other independent dating techniques. Diepkloof Rockshelter (DRS), however, has produced disparate chronologies that have resulted in a dating controversy. Criticisms raised have been used to cast doubt on and, in some cases, dismiss the chronology for the...
PIXE Analysis and Provenance Study of Archaeological Potsherds from West Africa (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.
Population Pressure and Subsistence Strategies Among the Mbuti Pygmies (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.
Potential 1.5 million year old phantom hearth at FxJj20 AB, Koobi Fora, Kenya (2015)
Identifying the control and use of fire in domestic spaces in the Early Pleistocene is contentious, due to the lack of physical evidence preserved in the record. The ephemeral nature of fires results in a sparse archaeological record. Further, the evidence for fire may degrade quickly depending on the depositional context of the burial environment. The potential for identifying fire in the early Pleistocene archaeological record, where accepted hearth features are unknown, relies heavily on...
Pots, Ethnoarchaeology, and Snake-Oil: James Skibo’s Lasting Impact on the Future of Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Method and Theory: Papers in Honor of James M. Skibo, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. James Skibo changed the way we study pottery. Jim’s archaeological career incorporated many different facets of archaeological research including experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, archaeology, and theory, all focusing on pottery research. One of his biggest influences is combining ethnoarchaeology and...
The pre-Aksumite Period in Eastern Tigrai: The Chronology and Stratigraphy of the Site of Mezber (2017)
The current understanding of the pre-Aksumite period of northern Ethiopia has been heavily influenced by data originating from sites in western Tigrai, particularly those in the area of Aksum. The Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP), however, has also documented substantial evidence for pre-Aksumite settlement further to the east, through both survey and excavation. This paper will summarize ETAP’s efforts to understand the pre-Aksumite period in eastern Tigrai at the site of Mezber,...
The Pre-Aksumite to Aksumite Transition in EasternTigrai: Ceramic Evidence from Ona Adi (2017)
The pre-Aksumite to Aksumite transition (PA-A transition) is critically important for the culture history of the Horn of Africa. This period in Western Tigrai (400/300–150 BCE) represents a cultural break between the Sabaean-influenced pre-Aksumite period (≥800–400/300 BCE) and the predominantly indigenous kingdom of Aksum. Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite polities in Western Tigrai were not directly related and marked by significant sociopolitical change. The emerging picture of the PA-A transition in...
Predatory Commerce, Elite Competition: Economic Conflict and the Downfall of Elite Communitas in the port of Mtwapa, Kenya, 1600-1750 CE. (2015)
The premise of this session is that "communities are not merely the byproducts of individual households pursuing their own productive strategies nor are households passive reflections of the larger communities of which they are a part." This paper focuses on Waungwana (elite) communitas at the Swahili port of Mtwapa, Kenya between 1600-1750 CE. Data from 10 elite wards is used to examine the effects of competition on both household and community. Analysis shows that the external predatory...
A Predictive Model of Archaeological Site Location in the Hodh ech Chargui Region, Mauritania (2015)
This paper presents a model to determine potential archaeological site locations in far southeastern Mauritania (known as the Hodh ech Chargui). Although sustained archaeological research has been carried out throughout West Africa since the 1940s, the 81,000 km2 Hodh ech Chargui region has been poorly examined, with two regional surveys constituting the majority of the archaeological record for the area. It has been proposed that the Hodh ech Chargui served as a place of passage between the two...
The Preferential Collection and Use of Ochre Pigments and Iron Ores at Twin Rivers Kopje, Zambia (2015)
Twin Rivers Kopje, Zambia is a Middle and Later Stone Age site first excavated by J. Desmond Clark that has yielded extensive evidence of mineral pigment collection and use dating to as old as 300,000 years ago. In this study, we sampled pigment sources within 25 km of Twin Rivers for digital colorimetry and trace element fingerprinting using Laser Ablation - Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry. In addition, all pigment excavated from the site by Clark was analyzed for sourcing....