Republic of Namibia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Thompson. Andrew Zipkin. David Wright. Stanley Ambrose. Flora Schilt.

The modern climate of the southernmost African Rift Valley is characterized by a single warm-wet season, which receives almost all annual precipitation. The other six months are arid, and surface water is confined to major river and lake features. In the northern basin of Lake Malawi, at the southern extent of the modern ITCZ, core records show a rapid increase in water surface temperatures peaking at ~5.5 ka, followed by a major expansion of grasslands. This coincides with the end of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Akin Ogundiran.

This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Yoruba sovereign states matured about the eleventh century in ideology, symbols of authority, and organizational structure. Governed by a system of monarchy comprising the divine king/palace officials and non-royal lords, theirs was a political arrangement that placed the king as first among equals with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzi Jones.

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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Maillot.

Muweis is located in the Shendi reach, about 300 kms north from the capital of Sudan, Khartoum. Its palace has been excavated by the Louvre Museum since 2007. It is part of the Meroitic Kingdom (350 BCE - 350 CE), which covered an area of 1500 kms on the Middle Nile Valley, making it the most important political structure known in Sub-Saharan Africa until the 19th century. In 2008 a medieval necropolis was discovered among the remains of the palace, under the debris of a small house situated at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia M. Fadem. Gavin Curry. Gabriel Rehm. Matthew Evans.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Skosey-LaLonde. Mussa Raja. Gideon Hartman. Nuno Bicho. Ana Gomes.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To understand the role climate played in facilitating the development and expression of human behaviors, our interdisciplinary research team cored the interdunal Nyalonzelwe lake (Inhambane coast, southern Mozambique) during the summer of 2019. Lake Nyalonzelwe sits 5 m above MSL and is sheltered from the Indian Ocean by a Pleistocene dune system. Its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Morris. Britt Bousman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Erfkroon is situated in South Africa’s Modder River Valley and is known for its well-stratified fluvial landscape and archaeologically rich terrace systems. The Orangia terrace is the subject of ongoing investigations because it is characterized by abundant in situ alluvial deposits containing Middle and Later Stone Age artifact assemblages in context with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Bisson.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtneay Hopper. Camilla Speller.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic-bound protein characterization, or paleoproteomics, can provide vital insight into the species-specific dietary decisions preserved in the pottery of past populations. This insight is particularly relevant for understanding the subsistence choices of Later Stone Age (LSA) herders living in the Namaqualand coastal desert of South...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Douglas. Jeffrey Altschul. Gerry Wait. Ibrahima Thiaw.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Initiative for Sustainable Development in Africa (ISDAf) was conceived in 2020 to raise awareness of the need to engage local indigenous and descendent (LID) communities as equal partners in Strategic Environmental and Social Assessments (SESA) and Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs) for development and conservation projects at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Hixon. Emma Elliott Smith. Brooke Crowley. Richard Bankoff. Douglas Kennett.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Watson. Marika Low. Alex Mackay.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Robberg technology is found across southern Africa, but currently is known primarily from cave and rock shelter contexts. This study characterizes the nature of the assemblage from a discrete cluster of Robberg artifacts at the open-air locality of Uitspankraal 9 (UPK9) in the Doring River catchment of the Cederberg Mountains. UPK9 is situated on the banks of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cory A. Henderson. Ryan M. Byerly. Cynthia Fadem. Curran Fitzgerald. Charles P. Egeland.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Coutros. Jessamy Doman.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sidy Ndour.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The petrographic and chemical analysis of ceramic shards from the Senegalese Atlantic period (1400-1900) is the weak link in archaeological research in Senegal. Archaeological surveys and excavations carried out for my doctoral thesis yielded several artifacts, including local ceramics. A qualitative study of the ceramics collection was carried out...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Killick. Edwin Wilmsen.

This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 45 years, Wilmsen, James Denbow, and others have recovered ceramics from nearly thirty excavated sites, in the northern half of Botswana. Together with Phenyo Thebe and Ann Griffiths, Wilmsen has also sampled clays and sands throughout the region, has obtained samples of raw materials, and prepared pastes and pots...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Otto Turza.

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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mel Miller.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Transitional lithics have the potential to inform researchers about innovation during significant periods of human evolution. The Fauresmith, an Early Stone Age (ESA) to Middle Stone Age (MSA) transitional industry in South Africa, is marked by the appearance of blade technology and composite tools alongside continuing traditions of large cutting tools. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Arthur.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynn Welton.

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,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Habtamu Mekonnen.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donald H Avery. Peter R Schmidt.

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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Collins. Christopher Ames.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wolfgang Alders. Abdallah Khamis Ali.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estabon. David Wescott.

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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...