Republic of Kenya (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (639 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Advances in understanding the Pleistocene archaeology of Africa depend on well-dated models of human behavioral change. Portions of southern Africa with limestone caves and eastern Africa with volcanic tephra have datable materials (uranium and argon, respectively) beyond the limit of the radiocarbon clock (50ka)....
The Construction of the Bantu Grass Hut (1975)
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...
Contact, Colonialism, and the Intricacies of Ethnogenesis: Portugal, Spain and the Iberian Moment (2018)
This paper examines Portugal’s and Spain’s varied contacts, intersections and colonial aspirations in West and western Central Africa. Portugal and Spain share centuries of culture history, religion, and governance, and were united under the Iberian Union between 1580 and 1640. Yet within the context of European expansion into the non-Western world, they have often been considered distinct with regard to their histories and as foci of study. Pushing beyond national pasts, this paper...
Contested Images: Rock Art Heritage on and off the Rocks (2016)
In many countries, cultural and socio-political identity is still shaped, manipulated, and presented through rock art. Both on and off the rocks, pictographs and petroglyphs are powerful tools. In this poster, I present results from ten years of fieldwork in southern Africa, northern Australia, and west Texas. I focus on re-contextualised rock art images, in commercial settings, in academic publications, and as integral components of national symbols. I also consider innovative new visitor...
Context-Specific Applications of Space Syntax on African Urban Sites (2018)
Organisation of space in preserved buildings and town layouts in sub-Saharan Africa have increasingly been in the research scope of archaeologists and architectural historians alike. The methods of space syntax and its associated theory have, especially since 2000’s, paved its way to African archaeology and used for new interpretations of architecture e.g. of Benin, Dahomey and the Swahili coast. Traditionally, space syntax is undertaken using access analysis graphs for individual buildings,...
Contextualizing Ritual and Collapse in Eastern and Southern African Chiefdoms and States (2017)
The role of ritual in the rise of complex societies is well understood in many regions of the world. In contrast, the roles ritual may have played in state collapse, regeneration, and resilience remains inadequately theorized in archaeological studies of the political dynamics of complex societies. This paper will evaluate the role of ritual in the emergence, resilience, and collapse of chiefly and state societies in Eastern and Southeastern Africa. Social and symbolic factors especially the...
The Copper Coins of the Kilwa Region, Tanzania, AD 1000–1500: Creating a Regional Currency in an Indian Ocean World of Coins (2018)
The residents and rulers of Swahili towns along the eastern African Swahili coast fashioned cosmopolitan worlds through their participation in long-distance trade both across the Indian Ocean and into the continental interior, their conversion to Islam, and the construction of cities that incorporated styles from across the Indian Ocean world. The creation and use of a local coinage—silver from the 8th-10th centuries, and copper from the 11th century onward—is often viewed as a way that town...
Creating the ‘Imagined Community’ of Mapungubwe (2017)
Mapungubwe’s influence spread deep into the regional hinterland, drawing in far-flung communities, trade networks and people. The traditional picture of a centripetal economy however has been challenged recently by work at these so called peripheries, indicating unexpected levels of autonomy and material wealth. While the place of these newly explored hinterlands need to be re-theorised and their agency acknowledged, there is danger in swinging the interpretive pendulum too far towards a...
A Critical Review of Radiocarbon Dates Clarifies the Human Settlement of Madagascar (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The timing and subsequent environmental impacts of the human settlement of Madagascar remain key topics of debate in archaeology. Located approximately 250 miles off the East African coast, Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, appears to have been one of the world’s last large landmasses to...
Cross-craft Overlaps in Materials and Symbolism: Insights from Legacy Crucibles from the Great Zimbabwe Archive (2017)
The legacy collections from Great Zimbabwe (CE1000-1700) emanated from uncontrolled treasure hunting expeditions of the late 19th and early 20th century and the sporadic professional digs conducted at various points throughout the twentieth century. As a result of this colorful history, most materials from the site are scattered in different archives where they are gathering dust with little or no research being performed. This contribution discusses a technological and typological analysis of...
Cryptotephra Studies in Africa: A Tool for Precise Dating and Continental Correlation of Archaeological Sites (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Placing archaeological sites on the same timeline across the African continent is essential for determining the initial appearance of key human behaviors and cultural features. Analytical error associated with traditional dating techniques makes these determinations difficult. Cryptotephra, which are small (<80 micron)...
The Cultural and Historical Connection between Tefinagh Inscriptions and Rock Art Sites in Tadrart Acacus (Southwest Libya) (2017)
This paper discusses what kind of cultural and historical correlation between Tefinagh inscriptions and rock art in the Tadrart Acacus. The Tuareg alphabet, Tefinagh, is one of ancient African alphabets documented not only in Libya but also Algeria and Tunisia, among other countries. It is traditionally taught by a mother to all her children. This alphabet, which dates back at least to the second half of the first millennium B.C.E, is used by approximately 50 percent of the Tuareg for short...
Cultural Continuity Along the Western Red Sea Littoral (2017)
The study of the ancient cultural history of northern Ethiopia, modern Tigray, often includes an interpretation of the obvious connections with the Arabian Peninsula, to the east, and the Nile Valley to the west. Less attention is usually given to contacts with the African heartland, to the south, and the relatively arid region between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, usually referred to as the Eastern Desert, to the north. The cultural connections with the latter are reflected in linguistic and...
Cut-Marked Bone of Drought-Tolerant Extinct Megafauna Deposited with Traces of Fire, Human Foraging, and Introduced Animals in SW Madagascar (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People could have hunted Madagascar’s megafauna to extinction, particularly when introduced taxa and drought exacerbated the effects of predation. However, such explanations are difficult to test due to the scarcity of individual sites with unambiguous traces of humans, introduced taxa, and endemic megaherbivores. We excavated three coastal ponds in arid...
Das System der Raumaufteilung in den Behausungen der nordeurasiatischen Völker. Volume 2: Der äußere Norden und Osten Eurasiens (1951)
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...
Decline, Collapse, and Regeneration of the State in 16th-Century Bunyoro (Uganda): A Diachronic Archaeological Perspective on Ritual and the Negotiation of Creative Power (2017)
Historical research by David Schoenbrun has identified the arrival of a new ruling dynasty in the 16th century as a pivotal moment when instrumental power was decoupled from creative power in Bunyoro. Unlike previous rulers in Bunyoro, the new Bito kings were not healers and spirit-mediums. New state rituals developed both in new places and at pre-existing shrines, as is evident from historical and ethnographic sources. Archaeological investigations at known shrines and other sites, all of which...
Decontaminating Archaeological Dental Calculus: A Protocol for Reliable Extractions (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During dental calculus formation, mineralization preserves microbotanical remains. These provide paleoenvironmental and dietary information. However, modern contaminants on archaeological samples overlap with target species thus necessitating decontamination procedures. We present an efficient protocol to avoid the presence of contaminants: a) testing the...
Deep Histories from Shallow Sites: Archaeological Investigations of Later Sites in Eastern Djibouti (2017)
Today, the Afar Region of East Africa is known for barren landscapes and some of the hottest average temperatures in the world. However, archaeological and climatological evidence suggests that over the last 3 million years the region has also exhibited temperate Savanna climes. This paper presents new archaeological data that chronicles the Oldowan through Islamic periods at the eastern edge of the Rift Valley. It begins the project of describing how deep historical processes intersected...
Delayed-Return Hunter-Gatherers in the Horn of Africa? Faunal and Radiometric Data from the Guli Waabayo Rock Shelter in Southern Somalia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Environmental changes during the African Humid Period (~11,000-5,000 BP) are associated with the emergence of new social and economic strategies among some hunter-gatherers in northern and eastern Africa. In response to Early Holocene climatic amelioration, foragers in southwestern Libya and the Lake Victoria Basin decreased their mobility and...
Density, Discard and Distraction: How Do We Form Inferences of Behavior from the Early Pleistocene Record (2017)
The discovery and excavation of dense patches of lithic artifacts has spurred discussion about how such features form. Interpretations are often based around the assumption that these reflect locations of targeted hominin use. Despite their assumed significance, there remains the possibility that high density scatters may reflect the vagaries of the formation processes of the Early Pleistocene archaeological record. Here we use a neutral model of the formation of the archaeological record to...
Development of Craft Specialization during the Pre-Aksumite Period in Eastern Tigrai, Ethiopia: Insights from Modern Hide-Workers (2017)
The pre-Aksumite period in Eastern Tigrai witnessed social and economic changes that have been traditionally attributed to the impacts ofexternal influences, in particular the Sabaeans. Recent studies are exploring internal or indigenous factors influencing the development of economies and early social inequality/complexity in the northern Horn. One such factor may have been the local development of craft specialists to cope with increasing demands for certain goods, such as hides. The export...
Deviant or Normal? Assessing Anomalies in Middle Stone Age Small Prey Exploitation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of forager economies in southern Africa have documented changes in subsistence strategies between the Middle and Later Stone Age. As evidenced by the disproportionate frequencies of faunal remains from large, gregarious grazers, the prevailing interpretation has been that MSA foragers...
Diachronic Changes in Late Pleistocene Ochre Technology at Mochena Borago Rockshelter, SW Ethiopia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations of the Late Pleistocene levels at Mochena Borago Rockshelter in SW Ethiopia, dating >50–35ka, have revealed one of the densest concentrations of modified ochre in eastern Africa. Here we consider technological variations of ochre and associated processing tools through studies of use-wear, trace elemental signatures, and artifact spatial...
Diasporic Tensions of Historical Framing and Material Process in Mauritian Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the tension between historical framing and material process in the context of colonial labor migrations, using archaeology of domestic and settlement landscapes in nineteenth-century Mauritius as a case study. Historical archaeology has the benefit of being able to...
Die Bedeutung der Kulturen des Niltals für die Eisenproduktion im sub-saharischen Afrika. (Studien zur Kulturkunde 39) (1976)
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...