Arab Republic of Egypt (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
476-500 (738 Records)
The funerary equipment of the Classic Kerma elite community included sets of ceramic vessels accompanying the primary deceased and sacrificed individuals. Stacks of beakers were placed in communal areas of graves, suggesting that the vessels were intended for group use in the afterlife. Graves with extraordinary organic preservation include woven giraffe-hair implements placed near the vessels. In comparison with ethnographic examples, these tools are beer strainers. Two graves also had vessels...
One Person’s Waste Is an Archaeologist’s Treasure: Using Techno-Typological Analysis of Debitage for Epipaleolithic Assemblages (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone tools have long been used by archaeologists as markers of cultural affiliation in prehistoric cultures. The Epipaleolithic (EP) of Southwest Asia (approx. 23,000–11,500 yrs BP) is no different; here microlith types are regularly used as signifiers of geographically and chronologically bounded cultural groups, social...
Ongoing Excavations at FxJj20Main-Extension-0, Koobi Fora, Kenya (2017)
Original excavation of FxJj20 sites in Koobi Fora, Kenya revealed nine oxidized patches described as combustion features associated with artifacts. Here we describe new excavations at a nearby new locality described as FxJj20Main-Ext-0. This excavation extends previous work in order to explore potential combustion features with newer techniques. Three squares adjacent to a reddened feature yielded 18 bones and 33 stone artifacts. All bone was fragmented. Most stone artifacts were basalt. Nearest...
Online Education on African Archaeology and Heritage: The ONLAAH Platform (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in Mozambique: Current Issues and Topics in Archaeology and Heritage Management" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Onlaah platform is formed by a consortium of institutions and partners, from Africa and around the world, such as the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), the University of Namibia (UNAM), the University Eduardo Mondlane (Angola), the ICArEHB (Algarve University, Portugal), the Autonoma...
ood, Agricultural, and Environmental Risk Management during the Holocene in Mesopotamia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using new microbotanical phytolith evidence, this article discusses what strategies were implemented to manage factors affecting agricultural strategies and staple food during the Late Holocene in a dry climatic condition in the Late Holocene at the Neo-Assyrian large site of Peshdar Plain located in Kurdistan, Iraq, Northern Mesopotamia. Located in the...
Ordinary or Extraordinary? Analytical Disjunctures between Production and Rituals in Pastoralist Societies (2018)
This paper considers the connection between the quotidian practices of pastoralism and the role of herd animals (and their material remains) in ritual practices in the Late Bronze Age in the South Caucasus. Zooarchaeological and isotopic analysis of faunal remains from Late Bronze Age (1500-1100 BCE) sites in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia have revealed new, if perplexing, evidence about everyday practices of production, distribution, and consumption of pastoralist products and the...
Organic Molecular Proxies for Fire in Archaeological Sediments (2018)
A number of different direct and indirect proxies are used to identify fire at archaeological sites. We propose a new organic molecular proxy for identification of anthropogenic fire in archaeological sediments, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These molecules are a byproduct of the incomplete combustion of organic biomass, and are preserved well on deep time scales. We applied this proxy to Lusakert Cave, a Middle Paleolithic site in the Hrazdan Gorge, Armenia. From these same samples,...
The organisation of hornfels blade production during the Early Later Stone Age (ELSA) in the eastern Cederberg, Western Cape, South Africa (2017)
The Early Later Stone Age (ELSA) represents the onset of sustained microlithic technology in southern Africa. The ELSA is, however, poorly defined with respect to its technological characteristics and organisation. In this paper we identify key features of the ELSA at Putslaagte 8 (PL8) rockshelter in the south-west of southern Africa, dating ~25-22 ka. The assemblage features relatively expedient production of hornfels blades using natural ridges of cobbles from the nearby Doring River. A...
Organization of Technology at Solak-1, an Upper Paleolithic Open-Air Site in the Armenian Highlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Solak-1 is an Upper Paleolithic open-air site located in central Armenia discovered by the Kotayk Survey Project. An obsidian-rich lithic assemblage totaling about 2,500 artifacts was recovered from six stratified horizons and subjected to techno-typological attribute analysis. Core reduction appears predominantly...
The Origin of Iron Smelting in Africa (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...
The origins of pastoralism in Eastern Africa: new human dental evidence from mid-Holocene Pillar Sites in the Turkana Basin (2017)
Herding spread into Eastern Africa ~5000 BP, but mechanisms of spread are still debated (migration, diffusion, or a mix). If herders migrated from desiccating areas of the Sahara, Sahel, or Ethiopian Rift, they would have passed through the Turkana Basin, where the earliest livestock coincides chronologically with the construction of megalithic "pillar sites." Recent excavations at 3 pillar sites revealed extensive human burials, plus caprine remains and zoomorphic artifacts suggesting these...
Ostrich Eggshell taphonomy and distribution at Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (2017)
Analysis of ostrich eggshell (OES) fragment distribution at Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (KEH-1) revealed taphonomic patterns. The variation of OES features and its distribution indicates that the OES was being used and processed differently in temporal and spatial context. KEH-1, a cave on the southern coast of South Africa, was inhabited by early modern humans throughout the Middle and Late Stone Age. Hearth features are prevalent throughout the sequence, providing evidence of occupational...
Out of Africa, or How Earlier Forms of African Governance Can Save the World (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. One of the consequences of European colonialism is the narrowing of the world’s political imagination. When colonists began to carve up Africa in the late nineteenth century, they were met with a dizzying range of governance systems—systems most famously pondered by academics in Fortes and Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) *African...
The Palace of Muweis and Its Medieval Necropolis (2017)
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...
Paleoecological Assessment of the Douglas Korongo East and Bell's Korongo East Sites, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (2017)
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...
The Paleolithic Archaeology of Shirak Province (Armenia) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within Shirak Province in the Republic of Armenia, the open-air site complex at Aghvorik is currently the most prominent site. The Paleolithic sites of Shirak are geomorphologically associated with the Ashotsk Plateau in the north, the Shirak Depression and northwestern slopes of Mt. Aragats in the south, and the...
Paleolithic Survey on the Upper Luangwa Valley, Zambia (2017)
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...
Pandemic Parallels: The Black Feminist Necropolitics of Excavating Cholera in the Time of COVID (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Black Studies and Archaeology" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. “The despair and deplorable conditions within which the black community continued into the realm of death and burial.” While Steven J. Richardson offered these words in 1989, their essence still rings true today. Over the past decade, skeletal remains of nearly thirty individuals have been discovered underneath the 3300 Block of Q Street in...
Pastoral Societies, Holocene Climate and Technology: Perspectives from Iron Age Southern Jordan (Session 4400) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How did pastoral societies evolve into more complex social organizations in what is today a hyper-arid desert zone? This paper examines the Iron Age (ca 1200 - 500 BC) data from southern Jordan that indicates relatively little climate change from today, yet the rise of complex pastoral nomadic societies.
Pastoral Territoriality as a Dynamic Coupled Human-Natural System (2018)
Despite research indicating that contemporary pastoral societies are more dynamic than previously assumed, there is a tendency to view South Arabian pastoralists as timeless heirs of a stable, ancient system or along a historical continuum of response to exogenous factors like the development of civilization, introduction of camels, or global climate change. In research triggered by NGS support, we proposal a new conceptual model for pastoral mobility regulated by dynamic feedback loops in...
Patterns in Amino Acid Delta 15N Values of Lemurs Are Inconsistent with Aridity Driving Megafaunal Extinction in Southwestern Madagascar (2017)
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...
Patterns of Hominin Land Use and Raw Material Procurement in the Paleo-Olduvai Basin, Tanzania (2017)
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...
Patterns of Land-Use and Political Administration Beyond the Core Areas of the Sasanian Empire (2018)
The landscapes of the Sasanian Empire have long been viewed as massive and state-sponsored development projects, in particular in politically and economically core zones. Despite these unparalleled understandings, our knowledge of peripheries and their connection with the sociopolitical organization of the time have still remained as some of the key gaps in the studies of late antiquity. To address these questions, I examine the settlement expansion, water management systems and agricultural...
People and Palaeoclimates at the Diallowali Site Complex: Changing patterns along the Middle Senegal Valley throughout the 1st millennium BC (2017)
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...
The People Who Harvest Together, Live Together. Ethnoarchaeological considerations on a Late Chalcolithic archaeobotanical assemblage from Çadır Höyük, Turkey (2017)
This paper presents archaeobotanical data from the Late Chalcolithic (LC) archaeobotanical assemblage at Çadır Höyük, a mounded site on the north central Anatolian plateau with almost continuous occupation from the Middle Chalcolithic through the Byzantine period. The analysis will focus on both descriptive and quantitative data from samples dating to around 3600 B.C.E. from a communal cooking area at Çadır. It will examine how archaeobotanical analysis can be used as a line of evidence to...