Republic of Ghana (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
226-250 (424 Records)
Surface assemblages play an important role in understanding human behavior. However, modern erosional processes—specifically flowing water—can limit the behavioral inferences that can be gained from surface assemblages by transporting materials from their original discard sites. The influence of these processes can be observed in the size distribution and condition of surface lithic assemblages. The topography and geomorphology of the landscape heavily dictates the degree to which fluvial...
The Location for the Origin of Domesticated Sorghum in Africa: A Brief Review of Some Cultures in the Sahara, Nile, and Sahel (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent analyses have established the location for the origin of domesticated sorghum occurring in the far eastern Sahel of Sudan during the fourth millennium BC associated with the Late Neolithic Butana Group. For over a half century, sorghum domestication has been hypothesized as occurring somewhere in the Sahelian...
Longevity and authority in a mobile world the megasites of the Ugandan grasslands (2017)
Much of the recent past of Great Lakes Africa is characterised by short-lived settlements and mobile societies, that produced ephemeral occupation sites. In part because of this, attention has long been drawn to sites like Bigo and Ntuusi which seem to offer much more substantive archaeological remains. Yet, notwithstanding the longevity of the latter and the extent of both, this is clearly not a simple occupation site featuring a large population. Rather it is much more effective to understand...
Luminescence Age Calculation Models, Termites, and Dune History in the Northern Kalahari Desert, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists often accept optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages with less critical review than those derived from the more commonly used radiocarbon dating methods. This is largely because of an incomplete understanding of optical dating techniques and the modeling assumptions used to calculate these ages....
Macro- and Microscopic Effects of Heating in Lithics: Potential Indicators of Human-Controlled Fire? (2018)
Outside of clear association of human activities and fire features (e.g., a constructed hearth and artifacts), a perennial challenge persists in linking human/hominin behavior to the control of fire. This particularly vexes ongoing investigations to determine early human-fire interaction(s). Although natural landscape fires can be intense, their tendency to move quickly may limit modifications in lithic material at ground level. Studies examining the effect(s) of heating tool-stone at different...
Mai Adrasha and Its Neighbors (2017)
A team from UCLA in cooperation with the Tigrai Culture and Tourism Agency and the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage of Ethiopia has completed two excavation seasons at the site of Mai Adrasha located about 70 kilometers west of the ancient capital of Aksum. With the information gathered in these excavations, we can now begin to compare Mai Adrasha to neighboring sites and place it within its regional framework. Radiocarbon dates from the first season of excavation...
Makala Kataa 1989 & 1990 Field Notes (1990)
Field notes from the 1989 and 1990 Banda Research Project field seasons at Makala Kataa, Banda area, Brong-Ahafo Region, Ghana, documenting excavations at Stations 6 (1989, 1990), 9 (1990) and 10 (1990). Typed transcriptions of field notes are accompanied by traced plan and profile maps. Handwritten annotations on Ann Stahl's copy of the notes are transcribed as comments.
Makala Kataa, 1994 Field Notes (1994)
Field notes from the 1994 Banda Research Project field season at Makala Kataa, Banda area, Brong-Ahafo Region, Ghana, documenting excavations at Stations 6 (Early Makala) and 10 (Late Makala). Typed transcriptions of field notes are accompanied by traced plan and profile maps. Handwritten annotations on Ann Stahl's copy of the notes are transcribed as comments.
Making Digital Copies of Photographic Prints (2018)
This handout, "Making Digital Copies of Photographic Prints," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. This guide walks you through the process of digitizing photographic prints from properly setting the scanner to creating archival and access copies. Best practices for file naming conventions and batch processing are also discussed.
Man does not go naked: Textilien und Handwerk aus afrikanischen und anderen Ländern; Festschrift für Renée Boser-Sarivaxévanis (1989)
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...
Managing Wooden Resources in Norse Greenland: Using Tree-Rings to Explore Wood Use and Acquisition Strategies in a “Treeless” Environment (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During medieval times, Norse Greenlanders relied heavily on wood for making household items, as a construction material, and as a fuel source. Although the quantity and quality of timber available in local woodlands were limited, Norse craftspeople also had access to driftwood and imported materials. Most studies in the North Atlantic use taxonomic...
Mapping MSA Deposits: Regional Geological Investigation of Upper Chari Member Sediments in the Ileret Region, East Turkana, Kenya (2017)
The Ileret region of the Koobi Fora Formation (KF Fm.), located in Kenya’s Turkana Basin, has historically been the focus of extensive archaeological research. Mid-Late Pleistocene units have previously lacked defined sedimentary beds due to an understudied unconformity of the upper Chari Member (1.34 Ma to 10 Ka). This represents a substantial limit to Middle Stone Age (MSA) research. Recent fieldwork (2016) incorporated a geoarchaeological survey of the upper Chari Member. Here we describe and...
Material elaboration and monumentality: Mortuary beads, pastoralists, and social innovation in northwest Kenya (2017)
Megalithic architecture appeared suddenly in northwest Kenya 5000 years ago in tandem with the earliest pastoralists in the region. As Lake Turkana’s levels dropped, these people built "pillar sites" – massive feats of labor and coordination that represent one of the earliest instances of monumentality in Africa – in a brief explosion of material and architectural elaboration. The burials associated with these pillar sites are highly ornamented, with thousands of beads made from stone, bone, and...
Measuring performance under sail (2009)
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 Medieval Necropolis of Mouweis (Shendi Area, Sudan): Bioarchaeological Insights (2017)
The site of Mouweis is a Nilotic city of the Meroitic period excavated by the Louvre Museum since 2007. This settlement includes a 1st century AD palace, later destroyed and reduced to a hill-shaped ruin. During the medieval period, a cemetery was created in the demolition level of this palace. Radiocarbon dating reveals a funerary occupation between of the 8th to the 14th century. Burials were mainly individual with a uniform typology and follow the same orientation as the structure of the...
Microremains on Stone (Tools): Discriminating Function-Related from Natural Residues (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. Plant microremains from stone tools speak to ancient hominin behaviour if genuinely related to usage. Residues, however, attach to rock surfaces naturally. My objectives are to identify pathways for microremain adherence prior to and after burial; study residue abundance in relation to petrography, microstructure, and...
A Middle and Later Stone Age sequence from Iringa, southern Tanzania (2017)
Magubike rockshelter in the southern Highlands of Tanzania contains a long archaeological sequence ranging from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) through historic times. This paper describes the lithic sequence from test pit 5, which contains a 2.5 m thick cultural deposit composed of recent / historic remains, an Iron Age, a microlithic Later Stone Age (LSA), a macrolithic LSA, a transitional sequence from the MSA to the LSA and 90 cm of MSA artifacts. The later part of the sequence replicates the...
The Middle Stone Age at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia: Implications for Regionalization and Migrations (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. Tentatively dated to MIS 5/4, the YAS-1 (Ya’alu South 1) site at Gona, Ethiopia is a high-density open-air archaeological site preserving classic Middle Stone Age (MSA) stone tools such as Levallois cores, Nubian cores, points, and blades in addition to a variety of fossil fauna, some with bone modifications including...
The Middle Stone Age Record in Egypt and Sudan: Implications for Out of Africa 2 (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. Africa is the continent of origin for Homo sapiens and thus is the source for human colonization of the Old (and eventually New) World. Out of Africa 2 (anatomically, then behaviorally, modern humans) is supported archaeologically by African stone artifact industries found outside of Africa. Two routes widely...
Mining and metallurgy in Negro Africa (1937)
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...
(Mis-) Reading Land: Early Portuguese Settlement on Cape Verde (2017)
This paper considers the early Portuguese settlement on Santiago Island, Cape Verde. Particularly focussing upon the towns of Cidade Velha and Alcatrazes, their immediate topographic settings clearly contributed to the long-term success of the former and the failure of the latter. Nonetheless, the results of a decade of excavation at Cidade Velha demonstrates how long it took for the colonisers to actually understand the landscape’s environmental dynamics, especially the impact of seasonal...
The Missing Medieval in the North Atlantic (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research in the North Atlantic has overwhelmingly focused on the long-term political and environmental impacts of the Viking Age colonization of these remote, marginal islands. In places like Iceland, these impacts were profound and resulted in the radical transformation of the previously...
A Model of the Extinct Palaeo-Agulhas Plain Ecosystem in Southernmost Africa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Unlike some regions, Africa was not subject to massive and abrupt mammalian extinction events in the Late Quaternary, but some African regions were subject to abrupt extinctions of small numbers of species. The coast of South Africa records such an extinction event near the Pleistocene and Holocene boundary. These extinct species were all adapted to...
Modeling Human-Environment Interaction in Sub-Saharan Africa: Archaeological Data, Ecological Questions (2017)
The African Iron Age transition is characterized by a shift from nomadic hunting and gathering societies to food-production, ferrous metallurgy, and centralized states and empires across most of the continent. Because of the magnitude and persistence of the change, understanding the African Iron Age is critical for assessing the present state and potential future of Africa’s ecosystems. Because the transition occurred episodically and at different times in different regions, and because large...
Mortuary Variability and Identity Upstream of the Fourth Cataract (2017)
Fieldwork upstream of the Fourth Cataract in northern Sudan reveals substantial variation in mortuary practices among roughly contemporaneous sites on both local and regional levels. Cemeteries in the Bioarchaeology of Nubia Expedition (BONE) concession on the right (north) bank of the Nile River near el-Qinefab include intervisible clusters of graves from the Kerma period (c. 2500-1500 BC) and into the subsequent period of Egyptian colonization of Nubia. These sites constitute a mortuary...