Africa (Continent) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ceri Ashley.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Hixon. Kristina Douglass. Henry Wright. Brooke Crowley. Laurie Godfrey.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shadreck Chirikure.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugene Smith. Racheal Johnsen. Jayde Hirniak. Minghua Ren. Curtis Marean.

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)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ahmed Alsherif.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Barnard.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John E Yellen.

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 Carl Walsh. Justin Yoo. Paul van Pelt.

This paper suggests that Egyptology has reached a critical juncture in which the opening of the field to other areas, such as anthropology and sociology, is critical in revitalising and safeguarding the future of the discipline. Discourse beyond disciplinary boundaries is becoming increasingly important in academia, due to wider changes in university structures, employment, and funding opportunities. Given the current importance of these issues, the authors wanted to determine how these aspects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James F O'Conell. K D Lupo.

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 Sean Hixon. Alejandra Domic. Kristina Douglass. Patrick Roberts. Douglas Kennett.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoff M Smith.

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 G Rank.

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...

DATASET Anne Austin.

These data are from observations on antemortem tooth loss and the presence of carious lesions from the site of Deir el-Medina, Egypt. The data were collected by Anne Austin and Mélie Louys as part of the mission of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale at the site during the 2012-14 and 2019-20 field seasons. These data were derived from human remains found in Theban Tombs 6, 217, 290, and 298. They are estimated to date from 1550-945 BCE. These data include macroscopic observations from...

IMAGE Matthew Boulanger. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

These images show the individual sherds from Debba analyzed by neutron activation at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Photographs were taken at LBNL and scanned by the Archaeometry Laboratory at MURR. Individual files were named according to the official catalog numbers of each image assigned by the Graphic Arts Department at LBNL.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abiye E. Ichaba.

By the beginning of the 19th century iron working played important roles in the economic and socio-cultural ways of the inhabitants of Abuja. The traditionally produced iron tools and implements provided the much needed tools for agriculture, warfare, trade, inter-group relations, control of the environment, and other socio-cultural developments. By c. 1800 A.D., British colonial interests in the area had increased, just like other parts of Nigeria. This paper explores the decline of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Robertshaw.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Soto. Siobhan Clarke. Jamie Inwood. Patrick Roberts. Julio Mercader.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Norman. Madeline Gunter. Bruce Larson. Hayden Bassett.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mica Jones. Steven Brandt.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Cameron Monroe.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Approaches to Slavery and Unfree Labour in Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Demographic historians have posited dramatic population decline across West Africa in the era of the slave trade, the cumulative effects of endemic warfare and the large scale population drain resulting from the export of enslaved peoples to the New World. At the same time, anthropological models for the organization of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Braun. Jonathan Reeves. Matthew Douglass.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemarie K Eggert.

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 Full-Text Ann Stahl.

This handout, "Developing Photo Metadata," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. The focus of this guide is on creating metadata for photographic collections. While there are many metadata categories that can be included in describing photographic collections, choices about which ones to include in a metadata template must be made. Metadata categories you record should anticipate your needs and those of future users of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Peterson.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Armstrong.

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...