Republic of South Africa (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (502 Records)
MSA backed pieces are often thought to be components of projectile armaments, however our limited understanding of their functional characteristics as projectiles precludes understanding the adaptive problems they may have solved. Despite widespread acknowledgment of raw material differences and inter- and intra-assemblage morphological variability, whether backed piece morphology reflects functional, economic, or stylistic variation has a paucity of empirical support. Here, the functional...
Functional Perspective on the Evolution of Hunting Technology in Africa and Europe (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of hunting technology is a key aspect of human behavioral evolution. Many efforts have therefore been made to identify prehistoric projectiles and propulsion modes, especially to determine when long-range...
Further Considerations of Tip Cross-Sectional Area for Determining Projectile Systems (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins and evolution of projectile technology have been a major research focus in paleoanthropology because projectiles are thought to have had crucial impacts on human adaptation and dispersal in the Pleistocene....
Geoarchaeological assessment of long-term site- and field-management characteristics at the pre-Aksumite site of Mezber, Tigrai Plateau. (2017)
The ancient polities of the Tigrai Plateau and this region’s pronounced climatic variations combine to create a research paradigm where social-environmental interactions can be considered over the long-term. Existing regional-scale indicators suggest that human responses to climate variability differed between peoples, polities and time-periods. Framed by an ongoing regional study designed to examine high-resolution climate and environmental markers at a broad-spatial scale, the study of the...
Geochemical and Sedimentary-Based Reconstruction of the Palaeoenvironment and Formation of the Late Stone Age Site of Txina-Txina (Massingir, Mozambique) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study aimed to reconstruct Txina-Txina site (located between the junction of Machampane and Chifati rivers, Southeastern Mozambique) paleoenvironment and site formation processes to better understand its occupation pattern, preservation of archaeological materials and the impact of palaeoenvironmental changes on human evolution. For this, we collected...
Geochemical Insights on Earth Mineral Pigment Provisioning and Use in Stone Age Eswatini (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Material Sourcing and Provenience Studies in Africa" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present results of a multi-method, regional-scale iron and manganese-oxide provenance study centered on five Middle and Late Stone Age sites and raw material sources in Eswatini. Earth mineral pigment artifacts are abundant at MSA and LSA sites and the variation observed in their typologies shows changes over time...
Glass Beads from Bumbusi in Northwest Zimbabwe: Intersection of History and Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The northwestern parts of Zimbabwe lie at a critical junction between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and—during the late Iron Age—witnessed major cultural changes. This includes possible migrations historically tied to the decline of major states to the south. Beads lubricated these transformations, making it possible to connect...
Great Zimbabwe's Water (2017)
In southern Africa, Great Zimbabwe has long been the focus of research, debates and preservation as the remains of what was once the urban centre of a vast state system. As new research findings are reframing the development of the Zimbabwe civilization in the region, local environmental settings and natural resources at Great Zimbabwe remain poorly understood. Using approaches in geoarchaeology, this paper presents Great Zimbabwe as a living landscape. New soil sequences from within and around...
Ground Stone Technology in the Late Pleistocene Horn of Africa: An Assemblage from Mochena Borago Rockshelter, Southwest Ethiopia. (2017)
Ground stone technology is an early component of the African Middle and Late Pleistocene hominin behavioral package. However, very little attention has been paid to quantifying Pleistocene ground stone variation in Africa. This paper describes a ground stone assemblage from the site of Mochena Borago in Southwest Ethiopia. The site plays a key role in testing the hypothesis that the highlands of Southwestern Ethiopia acted as a refugium for hunter-gatherer populations looking to escape...
The Harare Style: Digitally-enhanced photography in pursuit of a San rock art regional variant, Zimbabwe, Africa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The painted parietal art of prehistoric San Bushmen of southern Africa has been in the public eye since the 1920s. Iconographic and stylistic differences within the San artistic corpus have been attributed to distinctions of time and space within and among the many centers of image concentration. Rock art found in the ravines...
Hearth Features at Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1, Southern Coast of South Africa (2017)
The Agulhas Bank Paleoscape (ABP), a broad coastal plain that is now a submerged continental shelf off the south coast of Africa, would have presented early modern humans with a variety of potential foraging options. A rich Middle Stone Age record documents the presence of early coastal foragers as well as terrestrial hunter-gatherers in the ABP. At Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1, both strategies are represented in a sequence spanning the end of the Middle Stone Age (about 40 ka) through to the end...
Herder land use and nutrient hotspots in southern Kenya: geochemical analysis of anthropogenic soil enrichment. (2017)
Mobile herding societies are often considered to leave behind few traces in the archaeological record, however pastoral settlements may have helped shape the broader landscape. Herders relying on domesticated cattle, sheep and goat arrived in the most productive grasslands of East Africa >3600 calBP years ago. Our collaborative research investigates the legacies of their land-use through geoarchaeological analyses. We present results of analyses of five Pastoral Neolithic era archaeological...
Heritage Pragmatics: Problems and Opportunities in Pursuing Decolonization (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” Tuck and Yang remind us (2012). What does this call to action mean for heritage studies? This paper explores attempts at decolonizing cultural heritage management and research. First, tracing the ways coloniality has continued to influence management practices in Rwanda, the...
Het gebruik van vuur bij Bosjesmannen (1990)
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...
Historic Kormantse in the Formation of the African Diaspora in the Americas: Migration Routes (2018)
The impact of "Kormantse" as a cultural entity on the interpretations of the formation and transformations of the African Diaspora remains a major challenge among academics as many questions about the origins, migration episodes of populations, events and the process(es) involved remain unanswered. While bio-anthropologists explore DNA evidence, using various techniques of sequencing for possibly identifying common African ancestral connections or relationships, the need to review various routes...
HISTORICAL ECOLOGY OF TIV MIGRATION AND CONFLICTS IN THE BENUE VALLEY OF NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR FOOD SECURITY. (2017)
When the Tiv, a Bantu language speaking group migrated into the Benue Valley of Nigeria from southwestern Cameroon over five hundred years ago, they faced hostilities from different groups in the valley. Hilltops readily served as important settlement locales to protect the Tiv from violence and conflict. As they migrated from one hilltop to another they eventually settled over much of the Middle Benue Valley. Archaeological research in the valley has investigated these ancient hilltop sites...
Historical Ecology: An Approach to the Investigation of Ancient Human-Environmental Interactions in the Horn of Africa (2017)
Recent archaeological survey, excavation, ethnoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental research conducted in northeastern Tigrai by the Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) has produced new insights into the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (>800 BCE-CE 700). The principal ETAP excavations thus far include the Pre-Aksumite site of Mezber (1600 BCE-1CE) and Ona Adi (c. early 1st millennium CE) which was inhabited during the Pre-Aksumite to Aksumite transition. Both sites were occupied...
Holocene Palaeoenvironmental Changes in Southeastern Mozambique: The Case of the Inhambane Bay (2018)
Geoarchaeological surveys were conducted in 2016 and 2017 to better understand the environmental history and landscape evolution of the Inhambane coastal area, Southeastern Mozambique, aiming to know the environmental context of human occupation of the Tofo, Praia da Rocha and Chibuene archaeological sites. To reach this aim, 4 cores were collected in a mangrove area of the Inhambane estuary, an area both influenced by sea-level and climate changes. All the boreholes were georeferenced and...
Hominin land use of and movement in the Koobi Fora Formation (Kenya) (2017)
The occurrence of large densities of lithic and fossil material in Early Pleistocene contexts have been the focus of much interest. Several hypotheses modeling hominin foraging strategies have been generated to explain their formation. Assemblage formation is often hypothesized to be the result of particular land use strategies that relate to the movement and discard of stone artifacts. These hypotheses are difficult to test because they rely on ethnographic models of human movement, yet they...
Hottentot food remains and their meaning in the interpretation of fossil bone assemblages (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 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...
Households, Community, and Crafting at Kanono: The Creation of an Early 2nd Millennium Village in Western Zambia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Machile River in Western Zambia formed a significant locus of Iron Age life in Zambia and served as a conduit for the localized movements of people, things, and ideas in south-central Africa for much of the last two millennia. Within this dynamic corridor, the early second millennium Kanono site represents a relatively short-lived but well-defined...
How to Deal with Homogeneous Stratigraphies: Excavation, Sampling, and Analysis Strategies at Umhlatuzana Rockshelter, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Developing Paleolithic Excavation Methods for the Twenty-First Century" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To ensure proper context control for archaeological samples, it is crucial that excavations determine and, where possible, follow the natural stratigraphic subdivisions in a sedimentary sequence. In cases with a single, unchanging source of sedimentary input, this may pose challenges. We present our strategies to...
Human Agency and Theory in West Africa: Understanding Early Forest Agriculture Dynamics during the Neolithic (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite the fact that the need to study early indigenous agricultural systems in Africa has long been recognized and reaffirmed in recent archaeological discussions, African agricultural practices are still being modeled using concepts, terminologies, questions, lines of evidence, and methods derived from research elsewhere in...
Human and Animal Foodways on the Afar Salt Route, North Ethiopia (2018)
Caravans form an important component of ancient trade routes world-wide. They were lifelines to settlements and connected diverse landscapes. They also encouraged complex transport networks. Our understanding of ancient ways of life along these trade routes is, however, hampered by an incomplete picture of the participants or caravaners themselves. This study uses quantitative and qualitative data from ethnoarchaeological and archaeological research on the Afar salt caravan route in northern...
Human Landscape Modification and Environmental Change in the Western Kenyan Highlands (2017)
Interpretive challenges involving issues of equifinality and causation can chronically hamper environmental reconstruction efforts, as numerous physical, environmental, or anthropogenic processes may potentially be responsible for creating observed raw data patterns. Nested multi- proxy and multiscalar analyses offer potential means of approaching these difficult conceptual issues which can plague interpretations reliant on single lines of proxy evidence. A dataset comprised of multiple...