AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)
376-400 (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.
Prehistory of Africa (1972)
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 Prehistory of East Africa (1963)
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.
Preliminary results from new excavations of the Late Pleistocene occupations at Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa. (2017)
Grassridge Rockshelter sits at the base of the Stormberg Mountains in the northern part of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. This region has only been the focus of two previous major archaeological projects, with research at Grassridge last conducted in 1979 and identifying Holocene Later Stone Age and Late Pleistocene Middle Stone Age occupations. The Grassridge Archaeological and Palaeoenvironmental Project (GAPP) renewed research at Grassridge in 2014. In this presentation, we summarise the...
Preliminary Results of Geoarchaeological Sampling and Survey to Investigate Landscape History in Northern Unguja, Zanzibar (2017)
We present the preliminary results of a study investigating long-term agricultural history in northern Unguja, the southern island of Zanzibar. In the summer of 2016, we excavated four test pits in modern rice fields to collect bulk, starch, phytolith, C14, and micromorphology samples, as well as samples from upland areas along watersheds, with the aim of characterizing contemporary and ancient land use in the rice-growing western side of the island. We also carried out brief archaeological...
The price of freedom: health status in a freed slave community in Le Morne (18-19th centuries, Mauritius). (2015)
This contribution presents the preliminary results of an osteobiograhical approach to the life conditions of a slave/ex-slave population from Le Morne cemetery (18-19th centuries, Mautiritius Island). We evaluate the incidence of several stress indicators/pathologies on the human remains that are the result of environmental conditions during life. Dental health, infectious diseases and physical activity markers were analyzed to address the daily life of this population. Our results indicate high...
Primitive Art: Its Traditions and Styles (1962)
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.
Problems of Archaeological Site Preservation and Identification in the Highland Mountains of Ethiopia (2015)
This paper will discuss how historical, environmental, and social changes have effected archaeological site preservation in the mountains of the central Ethiopian Highlands, with implications for improving archaeological research in the region. Over the past decade, archaeological and historical research in the central highlands of Ethiopia has seen a growing interest to move beyond prominent Aksumite and Pre-Aksumite monumental sites to more ephemeral sites like medieval settlements and royal...
The promise and pitfalls of quantitative paleoenvironmental reconstruction in zooarchaeology: evaluation of late Quaternary micromammal assemblages from southern Africa (2017)
Over the last several decades, Quaternary scientists have developed numerous techniques to generate quantitative paleoenvironmental reconstructions based on the taxonomic composition of fossil assemblages. The appeal of these methods is that, rather than providing reconstructions in qualitative terms (e.g., cooler versus warmer), they offer potential to generate numerical assessments. While these methods have been applied to a variety of fossil organisms, including pollen, diatoms, foraminifera,...
Provenance and Distribution of Neo-Punic Ceramics at Zita, Southern Tunisia, and Beyond. (2017)
The site of Zita is an urban mound located in southern Tunisia and situated along an ancient trade route from Carthage to Tripoli. It is the highest point on a peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean Sea across from the Island of Djerba, often identified as the Island of Calypso of the Lotus-Eaters from the Odyssey. Established as a Carthaginian settlement around 500 BCE, the city became a Roman regional center in the 1st century CE. Zita still has industrial features such as ceramic kilns and...
Public Opinion and Archaeological Heritage: An Initial Perspective from Egypt (2017)
A recent survey of Egyptian public opinion on archaeological heritage issues focused on four main areas: level of public interest and participation in archaeology, the role of antiquities and monuments in contemporary society, perceived reasons behind the spread of the iliicit antiquities trade, awareness of problems and issues that endanger Egyptian antiquities and monuments. Data collected from a sample of 908 residents across nine governorates in Egypt are used to examine trends and patterns...
Putting Southern African Rock Paintings in Context: The View from the Mirabib Rockshelter, Namibia (2017)
Various researchers have made great strides toward understanding southern African rock art through the exploration of the ethnographic and ethnohistoric records of San hunter-gatherer shamanism. In contrast, less attention has been paid to the archaeological context of the Later Stone Age (LSA) in which rock art was produced. This paper examines Middle Holocene rock paintings at the Mirabib rockshelter in the Central Namib Desert, western Namibia. Our fieldwork at Mirabib and our re-analysis of...
Quantifying the effects of erosional processes on stone artifact concentrations: Implications for site formation at open-air Paleolithic sites (2015)
An essential part of archaeological site management and interpretation is determining how recent landscape modifications affect artifact distributions. Stone artifact scatters can be an initial indicator of subsurface concentrations, yet little scholarship has focused on quantifying the nature and rate of the erosional processes that affect them. The archaeological record of northern Malawi demonstrates that despite abundant surface scatters, subsurface distributions may vary considerably in...
Radiocarbon dated archaeozoological and palaeoecological evidence of initial human colonization in Madagascar (2016)
Human impacts to Madagascar, through the introduction of non-native species, habitat modification and species extinctions, are thought to have begun in the prehistoric period. Understanding of these anthropogenic modifications to Madagascar’s ecosystems is, however, impossible without solid chronologies for human settlement and expansion across the island, which are currently lacking. Estimates of the period in which people first colonized Madagascar have varied considerably, and never more so...
Raw Materials, Reuse, and Refuse: A multi-disciplinary study of Karanis glass (2015)
This multi-disciplinary study comprising archaeological, scientific, and morphological analyses as well as ethnoarchaeology and textual analysis, interrogates how value was assessed in the ancient world by examining Roman glass from Karanis, Egypt. Onsite portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) analysis of recently excavated glass was conducted since the Egyptian government prohibits the export of artifacts for further analysis. This research, combined with pXRF and electron microprobe...
Re-Examination of the Evidence for Agricultural Origins in the Nile Valley (1971)
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.
Rebound Hardness Results for the Raw Material In and Around Pinnacle Point, South Africa and the Implications Thereof (2015)
The Middle Stone Age lithic assemblage at the Pinnacle Point site (Western Cape, South Africa) fluctuates between local, coarse-grained material and exotic, fine-grained, heat treated material throughout the human occupation layers. By understanding raw material choice, the first step in the chaîne opératoire, we can better understand these shifts in raw material representation. Quantifying the mechanical characteristics associated with knapability and comparing these ranked benefits to the...
Recent paleoanthropological work at DK East, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (2015)
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, remains one of the richest sources of information on human bio-behavioral evolution between 1-2 million years ago. While much research has justifiably focused on the gorge’s junction area and its rich collection of sites, including FLK 22 (The Zinjanthropus Floor), the older fossiliferous deposits to the west have received much less attention in recent years. The DK area, which lies along the north edge of the main gorge, is particularly intriguing and was made famous by...
Recent Research on Megalithic Stele sites of the Gedeo Zone, Southern Ethiopia (2016)
This presentation discusses a new research effort to identify, document, date and better understand the numerous megalithic stele sites of the Gedeo Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Regional State (SNNPRS) of southern Ethiopia. The Gedeo Zone is home to numerous stele, features that occur as isolates, in small groups, and as localities with numerous stele. Stele range from 1 meter to over 5 meters in length, and though some remain standing, most have collapsed. Stele are...
The Relevance of the Abdur and Asfet Middle Stone Age Sites from the Red Sea Coast of Eritrea (2016)
The Red Sea basin is emerging as an important region for testing current hypotheses concerning early human dispersal routes out of Africa. However, the immediate peripheries of the basin, especially the African side had seen little prior Paleolithic research, hindering well informed assessment of the temporal and cultural contexts of hominin adaptation along the Red Sea. Owing to its strategic geographic position along the African side of the Red Sea, Eritrea (with ~1300 km of coastline)...
Relocate, Aggregate, or Fortify?: Exploring Local Responses to Atlantic Era Entanglement in Southeastern Senegal (2016)
The 16-19th centuries in West Africa marked a period of dramatic social and cultural change fueled, in part, by the opening of Atlantic markets and the rise of predatory states. The responses of societies peripheral to these political economic processes often involved strategic shifts in the production of space—including relocation to highland refuge areas, aggregation into larger villages, increases in residential mobility, and fortification of elite houses and/or entire settlements. In this...
Remaking the Swahili Coast in the Interior: Rashid bin Masud and the Creation of Kikole (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Slave and ivory trader Rashid bin Masud created the caravan trading post Kikole in southwestern Tanzania in the 1890s. Like Dutch colonists in South Africa, Masud appears to have sought to tame this foreign landscape and to cultivate a resemblance to his home region (in his case, the Swahili Coast). For example, he planted coastal...
Remodel, Rebuild, or Abandon?: Changing uses of space in an early West African Village (2017)
Ancient villages in western Burkina Faso were long-lived communities, temporally rooted in deep social histories experienced in the built environment and local geography. The site of Kirikongo, continuously inhabited from ca. 100 CE to 1700 CE, and composed of 13 separate tells (mounds), exemplifies these spatio-temporal dynamics, as over time the economic and social characters of tells, and their spatial positioning and characteristics changed dramatically despite maintenance of certain spatial...
Remote Sensing for Late Holocene Archaeology in Central Sahara: A Multi-Scalar Approach (2017)
At the end of the African Humid Period (c. 5000 years ago), the Sahara become dry. Yet, in spite of the onset of current arid conditions, human societies found successful strategies to cope with reduced rainfall and patchy natural resources. Archaeological evidence from the arid Sahara, dated from the last five millennia, can be studied by means of Earth Observation techniques. In this paper, we will present the results of our research from central Sahara, aimed at the remote reconstruction of...
A report of recent excavation at Okete-Kakini palace precint, Idah, Niger-Benue Confluence, Nigeria (2016)
This paper will report the recent excavation at Okete-Kakini site near the king’s (Attah) palace in Idah. Okete-Kakini was the residential area of Attah’s eunuchs (amonoji), one of the two major palace officials who carried out various functions for the Attah. The aim of the investigation is to identify the activities of the palatine elites through an examination of their material culture found in archaeological excavations. It is thought that the members of the palatine groups, like the formal...