Africa (Continent) (Geographic Keyword)
426-450 (1,057 Records)
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...
Het ijzersmelten bij de Madi (1974)
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...
Hierakonpolis: A Case Study for an Early, Large Low-Occupation-Density Settlement from Egypt (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much attention has been drawn to the discovery of unusually large agglomerations, so-called “anomalous giants,” that appeared out of nothing at different times and in many parts of the world, suddenly and without any signs for a noticeable long-term trend that would...
Hilary Duke and Sonia Harmand—A New Approach to the Evolution of Early Pleistocene Hominin Cognition and Technological Change: Examining the Technological Context of LCT Emergence 1.8–1.76 Ma at Kokiselei, West Turkana, Kenya (2018)
The eastern African Early Pleistocene witnessed critical shifts in climate, environment, hominin anatomy and behavior. The lithic record shows change within this broader context. After 1.8 Ma, Large Cutting Tools (LCTs), such as bifaces, entered the hominin lithic repertoire. These artifacts are widely viewed as the first evidence of lithic shaping. Many archaeologists theorize both cognitive and practical differences between "flaking" and "shaping" among knapping strategies. Most of these...
A Hippo Hip and and an Olive Pit (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How Richard Redding's identification of a hippopotamus hip bone catalyzed a rethinking of the Heit el-Ghurab site of 4th Dynasty (ca. 2500 BCE) settlement at the Giza Pyramids, and how central authorities mobilized and organized labor for building pyramids.
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 Demographic and Economic Change in the Highlands of Western Kenya: Archaeobotanical and Mycological Evidence (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last several millennia of cultural history in the western Kenyan highlands have been marked both by punctuated periods of considerable demographic and economic change, and by continuous in-situ processes of genetic, linguistic, and economic interaction and admixture. Historical linguistic and archaeological models of the peopling of this region have, among...
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 Do Spear-hunting Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes Virus) Adjust to Prey Behavior at Fongoli, Senegal? (WGF - Post PhD Research Grant) (2017)
This resource is an application for the Post PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) living in a savanna environment at Fongoli, Senegal are the only known mammalian population besides humans that hunt with tools. Chimpanzees here use modified stick tools ('spears') to hunt nocturnal prosimians (Galago senegalensis) as they nest in tree cavities during the day. Additionally, females hunt significantly more than expected with tools, while males...
How Grassroots Initiatives Preserve and Protect Tunisian Cultural Heritage (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Medina of Tunis is an ancient Islamic city and a UNESCO World Heritage site. However, it is in a vulnerable state, with many historic palaces, ancient dwellings, and monuments confronting neglect, leading to an alarming rate of deterioration. In 2021, an independent ethnographic research study was conducted in the Medina of Tunis in collaboration with...
How I Built My House. An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Gendered Technical Practice in Tigray, Ethiopia (2009)
In northern Ethiopia, men and women build houses together but they use different building techniques to do so. These gendered technical practices are used in other gendered tasks that are concentrated in different but overlapping spatial realms, where men and women perform daily activities. It is proposed that gendered technical practice constitutes identities and relationships by creating a gendered material world that makes sense of who makes what, where, when, and how.
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...
How to Organize and Scan Photographic Collections (2019)
This handout, "How to Organize and Scan Photographic Collections," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. When working with photographic collections, it may come to you as a set of prints, negatives or slides. This handout provides a brief background on each medium and provides a recommended workflow for working with photographic collections. Helpful resources and practice questions are also included.
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...
The Human Experience of Social Transformations in the North Atlantic and US Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists and other scholars have long studied the causes of collapse and other major social transformations and debated how they can be understood. This paper instead focuses on the human experience of living through those transformations, analyzing 18 transformation cases from the North Atlantic and the US Southwest....
Human Interment and Making Memory in Viking Age Iceland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over 300 Viking Age (AD 871–1000) human interments are known from Iceland, many with accompanying dogs and horses. Though these interments are similar to those of elites in Scandinavia, inhumation burial in Iceland apparently served a different purpose — to demarcate boundaries in a landscape devoid of...