AFRICA (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Willeke Wendrich. Rachel Moy. Hans Barnard.

The combination of gold and archaeology is never a good one. The site of Mai Adrasha is under imminent threat of total destruction because of large scale panning of natural gold traces by the local population living near to the largest Axumite site West of Axum. In December 2015 a team from UCLA started a community project to work with the local population in safeguarding and excavating this important site. The research focus of the work is to establish the lay-out, development and function of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Conquery-Vidrovitch.

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 Stefano Biagetti.

In the Tadrart Acacus (SW Libya), ethnoarchaeological research carried out between 2003-2011 has shown that its current inhabitants, the Kel Tadrart Tuareg, are a successful example of adaptation to extreme climatic and environmental conditions. Their exceptional resilience, characterized by high degree of variability and opportunism, escapes some of the traditional assumptions often done in ethnography and archaeology regarding the classification and identification of societies, such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Douglass.

This paper discusses resource exploitation patterns at coastal archaeological sites located in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area in southwest Madagascar. In particular, it assesses the selective reliance of coastal communities on a variety of local habitats and taxa. The data are derived from regional survey and the excavation of five archaeological sites, including small rock shelters and open-air sites, ranging in date from ca. AD 800 to 1900. The data describe multiple narratives of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bethany Simpson. Emily Cole.

This paper presents the results of the 2016 field season at the Graeco-Roman Village of Qarah el-Hamra. Located along the north shore of Lake Qaroun, the site was discovered in 2003 by the UCLA Fayum Project, and a magnetic survey in 2004 revealed the presence of an extensive settlement. Excavation that same year confirmed the existence of Greco-Roman remains, however the site remained otherwise unexplored until the start of this new field project in 2016. The new Qarah el-Hamra Excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Ames. Benjamin Collins.

Grassridge rockshelter is located at the base of the Stormberg Mountains approximately 200 km inland in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Previous excavation by Dr. Hermanus Opperman in 1979 focused primarily on the Later Stone Age (LSA) and Holocene occupations at Grassridge, but he also identified an underlying Middle Stone Age (MSA, ~300-30 ka) sequence containing abundant typologically MSA lithic material, well-preserved faunal remains, and charcoal. With particular interest in the MSA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Curtis.

Sustained archaeological research on the Asmara Plateau of Eritrea occurred between 1998 and 2003, producing important initial efforts in ceramic and lithic artifact typologies, subsistence reconstruction, and regional perspectives in landscape use and settlement patterns dating to the first millennium BCE. Researchers identified a distinct regional cultural expression termed the Ancient Ona Culture. This paper reviews the key qualities of the Ancient Ona Culture and argues that, while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Taylor.

Despite almost 100 years of scientific research, the archaeological record of Central Africa remains stubbornly peripheral to ongoing debates centering on the origins of rainforest hunting and gathering. Currently available chronological, palaeobiogeographical and technological data converges to indicate that the initial settlement of the central African rainforest belt may have been first undertaken c.300 ka BP by archaic Homo sapiens. The appearance of new tools suitable for hafting as stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karl W. Butzer.

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 Sam Challis.

Statements of authorship of rock art necessarily involve statements of identity. What happens, then, when identity is assumed or implied? This paper examines a well-known historical rock art panel in South Africa, supposed to portray a narrative of the demise of the San from their own perspective. To the contrary it finds that in fact the 'colonists' sporting wide-brimmed hats and toting guns are, more likely, members of an emergent identity of creolized raiding bands drawn from markedly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Coutu. Judith Sealy.

During the African Iron Age from 800 to 1200 AD, overseas trade began to expand out of southern Africa across the Indian Ocean, which caused an increase in the export of raw materials such as ivory. Archaeological evidence of ivory working has been found on sites across southern Africa dating to this period, including KwaGandaGanda and K2 in South Africa, Kaitshaa and Bosutswe in Botswana and Ingombe Ilede in Zambia. It is unknown whether the raw ivory was obtained locally or traded in, whether...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Hernández. Carolina Mallol. Matilde Arnay. Margarita Jambrina-Enríquez. Antonio V. Herrera-Herrera.

This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Roques the García rockshelter is an aboriginal site located in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. Its archaeosedimentary sequence is characterised by a high presence of combustion structures. In this study we present the preliminary results from a micromorphological and biomarker analysis of one of the structures.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerald M. Berg.

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 Marcle D'Hertefelt.

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 Peter Schmidt.

One of the most vexing problems in the archaeology of eastern Africa is the absence of burial evidence from deep antiquity. This issue is now moot with the documentation of multiple burials on the narrow rims of steep volcanic calderas in far western Uganda. Dating to the early first millennium CE, these cemeteries contain well preserved individuals who lived in a forested environment they modified by fire while subsisting on a mixed diet of fish, game, and agriculturally produced grains....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Olsen.

Saudi Arabia has a rich cultural heritage that is amply represented in the extensive rock art from north to south along the western half of the Arabian Peninsula. Two petroglyph localities, Jubbah and Shuwaymis, were just awarded UNESCO World Heritage status. Representing a wide temporal range and diverse styles, it is clear that the art is concentrated adjacent to ancient lakes, along wadis, and around other sources of ephemeral pools of rainwater. This study examines the distribution of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jun Sunseri.

Taking on graduate students and shepherding them through the harrowing process of becoming PhD’s is something few faculty take lightly. Within the rigorous methodological sub-discipline of Zooarchaeology, even fewer would commit to the requisite long and close apprenticeship with students whose backgrounds lay "outside of the box" of faunal-focused research. Yet, Diane populated her research cluster with a dynamic mixture of scholars from disparate backgrounds, just as she kept the famous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Huffman.

The relationship between Leokwe and Leopard’s Kopje people represents the first known ethnic interaction in pre-colonial southern Africa. As the subordinate partner, Leokwe had roles befitting their ‘first people’ status. Salvage excavations at the Leokwe Main Rest Camp uncovered ‘extra’ cattle kraals, while Leokwe faunal assemblages there and elsewhere contain high percentages of low-status cattle bones. Thus, Leokwe herdsmen were probably tending the cattle of K2 elite. Two sites on Schroda...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Stahl. Amanda Logan.

In this paper, we examine food practices in Banda, Ghana, during the tumultuous 15th to 17th centuries AD, as global scale political economic shifts collided with local economies. In Banda, significant involvement in northward-looking Niger trade began to erode as attention shifted towards emerging Atlantic networks. At the same time, paleoenvironmental records indicate a severe, multi-century drought. How did people negotiate these pressures in their everyday food practices? To address this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Tryon. Nick Blegen. J. Tyler Faith.

Among recent groups, foraging activities are unevenly distributed across the landscape. Archaeological traces of past foragers are also spatially variable as a result of multiple factors, including the redundancy of site use, a bias towards tasks that leave well-defined material traces likely to preserve into the present (e.g., stone tool manufacture), and local sedimentological factors that mediate site preservation through burial as well as subsequent recovery through erosion or excavation....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tilman Lenssen-Erz. Brigitte Mathiak. Eymard Faeder. Maya von Czerniewicz. Joana Wilmeroth.

In prehistoric rock art the notion of ‘scene’ always played an important role but a clear and widely accepted definition of scene does not exist and little was written about what constitutes a scene. If informing context lacks, Gestalt features are often taken to identify what can be considered a meaningful scene. If we consider a scene as displaying a social animated configuration, then the Gestalt laws alone are an insufficient tool. Particularly in scenes including humans and animals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Kissel. Agustin Fuentes.

One of the distinctive aspects of human behavior is the ability to think symbolically. However, the ability to track this capacity archaeologically is complicated by debates on what makes an object symbolic. Rather than initially asking if materials are symbols/symbolic, we offer that it may be better to ask if and how they are signs. A more nuanced view of "symbol" in the archaeological record, combined with aspects of Peircean semiotics, can help to bridge the gap between the material record...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Mitchell.

This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Madagascar constitutes a major anomaly in the history of human colonization: 400 km from the African mainland, but with a population whose culture, language, and genes derive substantially from Indonesia, more than 7000 km away. Recently, the argument has gained ground that the island was settled (perhaps from Africa) significantly earlier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Wissler.

Patterns of disease manifestation in individuals and within a community reveal how health is affected by social and economic identity. Differences in wealth and social status can lead to disparities in diet, living conditions and healthcare. This interaction is explored using data from skeletal remains and grave architecture from the Predynastic Cemetery N7000 at Naga-ed-Der, located in Upper Egypt. In his Ph.D. dissertation, Stephen Savage (1995) organized individuals into six spatial clusters...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Drake Rosenstein.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. David Killick came to archaeology perhaps earlier in life and almost surely in a more unconventional way than did most of us: at a prestigious, all-boys boarding school in what was then colonial Rhodesia. Student trips to the nearby Matobo Hills, an extraordinary landscape of balancing granite...