Republic of Seychelles (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (391 Records)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Situated within the Great Rift Complex of northwest Kenya, the Elgeyo Escarpment and surrounding region has been home to Marakwet communities for the last three hundred years. Many of these communities inhabit settlements which span diverse ecosystems, from semi-arid bush to highland forests. In tandem with changes in local lifeways and...
Landscape Evolution, Digital Terrain Analysis, and the Integrity of Surface Assemblages: A Case Study from the Koobi Fora Formation (2018)
Lithic surface scatters comprise a large proportion of the archaeological record but their value for understanding human behavior is often doubted. Modern geomorphological processes often laterally displace and selectively bias surface assemblages of artifacts. The predictable effects of displacement on the condition, weathering and size distributions of lithic assemblages is better understood. While topography is known to play a role in this process, the degree to which topographic variables...
Landscape Technological Strategies in the Southern Kalahari Basin: North of Kuruman Archaeological Survey, South Africa (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. The southern Kalahari Basin in the northern interior of South Africa has provided evidence for early use of fire, Mode 3 technological developments, early stone-tipped spears and pigment use. Innovations seen in the southern Kalahari Basin early in the Middle Stone Age may represent changes in how human populations...
Landscapes of Stone in Mauritius and Zanzibar (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Spatial Archaeometry: A Survey of Recent High-Resolution Survey and Measurement Applications" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using archaeological and geospatial methods, we compare landscape modifications associated with the maintenance of the monocropping plantation orders under Omani, French, and British colonialism in nineteenth-century Zanzibar and Mauritius. How do similarities and differences in...
Large Mammal Fauna from Klasies River Main Site: Changing Environmental Conditions during the Late Pleistocene of South Africa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Klasies River is one of the most significant Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in Africa with a sequence spanning from c. 120,000 to c. 50,000 years ago (ka). Because it yields one of the largest collections of human remains dated to the Late Pleistocene associated with an abundance of MSA cultural remains, it is an important site for understanding the development...
Late Holocene Spread of Pastoralism Coincides with Endemic Megafaunal Extinction on Madagascar (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recently expanded estimates for when humans arrived on Madagascar (up to ~10,000 years ago) are based on limited data yet highlight questions on the causes of the island’s relatively late megafaunal extinctions (~2000–500 years ago). Introduced domesticated animals could have contributed to extinctions through competition, but the arrival times and past diets...
Late Pleistocene Archaeofauna from the Kasitu Valley of Northern Malawi: Palaeoenvironments and Evolution of Faunal Communities in the Zambezian Ecozone (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. The Zambezian Ecozone of east-central Africa comprises faunal communities that include elements from both southern and eastern Africa. The region has long served as an important crossroads for faunal exchange, but its timing and implications for hunter-gatherer behavior are unknown. Late Pleistocene faunal assemblages...
Late Pleistocene Occupation in the Southern Kalahari: New Results from the North of Kuruman Palaeoarchaeology Project (2021)
This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent investigations of the southern African Late Pleistocene archaeological record have transformed our understanding of the biocultural evolution of our species. Although the intensity of research on coastal and near-coastal records is greater than in the...
A Late Pleistocene Palaeoenvironmental Record for Northern Namaqualand, South Africa: Geoarchaeology, Geochronology, and Stable Isotopes from Spitzkloof A Rockshelter (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at Spitzkloof A Rockshelter, northern Namaqualand, South Africa, identified a deep stratified sequence with pulsed occupation dating to the Last Glacial Maximum (23–17 kcal. BP) and Marine Isotope Stage 3 (>51 ka BP), while the lowest layers are candidates for U-series dating. Importantly, this period encompasses a time of marked climate...
Laying Down with Dogs: The Role of Canis familiaris in Mongolia and Transbaikal during the Xiongnu Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Xiongnu period (ca. 250 BC–AD 150) of Mongolia and Transbaikal marks a dramatic change in the frequency and treatment of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) in the archaeological record. While this shift in burial and consumptive practices are indirectly acknowledged in the academic...
Least-Effort Knapping as a Baseline to Study Social Transmission in the Early Stone Age (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Variation in lithics has been used as a mechanism to infer diachronic aspects of hominin behavior. The emergence of the Acheulean industry is considered a major milestone in the evolution of hominin cognition. This perspective is predicated on the idea that Acheulean large cutting tools (LCTs) require mental templates imposed through knapping and that LCTs...
Life in the Margins: The Pre-Still Bay Deposits from Varsche Rivier 003, Southern Namaqualand, South Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Varsche Rivier (VR) 003 is located in the Knersvlakte, the quartz-gravel plains of southern Namaqualand, South Africa. While currently a marginal, low-rainfall region within the Succulent Karoo Biome, conditions were more favorable during the Late Pleistocene....
Lithic Analysis of an Early Later Stone Assemblage at Malony’s Kloof, a Rock Shelter in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Temporal organization systems which separate lithic artifacts into designations based on age, geographic area and technology are vital in order to operationalize archaeological information and allow for researchers to make their findings transferable and reproducible. Each Stone Age has characteristics that allow researchers to designate technologies...
Lithic Attribute Analysis for Blydefontein Backed Blades and Endscrapers (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Attribute analyses are common in the field of archaeology for categorizing and analyzing artifacts. In this study, the Later Stone Age end scrapers and backed blades from Blydefontein Rock Shelter in South Africa undergo an attribute analysis using an objective attribute guide. The guide combines common terms from previous studies along with new terms for...
Lithic Miniaturization and Behavioral Variability in Southernmost Africa 18–11 kcal. BP (2018)
Lithic miniaturization, the systematic production of small stone artifacts by controlled fracture, was a pervasive feature of late Pleistocene lithic technology. Smaller toolkits enabled humans to exploit raw materials more efficiently, to produce composite tools more effectively, to reduce a wider range of rocks, and to increase mobility by lightening toolkits. These benefits allowed humans to occupy a wider range of ecological niches. Archaeologists working in southern Africa have long...
Local Responses to Global Events: Regionally Distinct Dietary Changes among Eastern African Herders at the Close of the African Humid Period (2018)
Changing human diets in eastern Africa across the end of the African Humid Period (AHP) have been inferred indirectly from cultural and faunal remains at archaeological sites. Stable isotope analysis (SIA, specifically δ13C) can measure diets directly, yet few studies have conducted SIA on human remains from this region. We present 25 new δ13C values from human tooth enamel recovered from archaeological sites around Lake Turkana (northwest Kenya) and on Lukenya Hill and Rigo Cave (southern...
Long-Term Settlement in Plantation Regions of Unguja, Zanzibar (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I discuss the results of an archaeological survey conducted in 2019 in north-central Unguja, Zanzibar. The aim of the survey was to investigate the long-term settlement history of regions that were transformed in the nineteenth century by Omani landowners who developed an agricultural export economy using a labor force of enslaved East Africans....
Low-Cost Centripetal Technology in the LSA of Southern Mozambique (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Expedient Technological Behavior: Global Perspectives and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Centripetal lithic technology, including various forms of Levallois technique, is very common in the African MSA. This technology is commonly identified by prepared core technology, where striking platforms are fully prepared to produce a variety of blanks. In Mozambique, both Levallois and prepared discoidal...
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...
Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Evidence for Plant Use and Consumption at Gede, Kenya (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last several decades, excavations at numerous Swahili period sites along the East African coast have yielded a wide variety of data on economic and cultural practices during the last millennium BP. The results of intensive flotation recovery of macrobotanical remains from pit latrine sediments at housing structures are presented, providing direct...
Macroscopic Comparative Studies of Archaeological Data: Spatiotemporal Variability in Lithic Technology of Paleolithic Asia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Comparative studies using archaeological data on a broad spatiotemporal scale can provide an overview for investigating significant questions in human history and can promote discussions among scholars from different disciplines. This talk will present the results of a quantitative analysis of lithic technologies from the...
The Making of Agro-pastoral Landscape of the Tibetan Plateau: A Zooarchaeological Perspective (2018)
The vertical ingredient of the Tibetan Plateau plays a unique role in making of the highland agro-pastoral landscape. We divide the Tibetan Plateau into three eco-altitudinal zones: areas below 3,000 m.a.s.l.; areas between 3,000 and 4,200 m.a.s.l.; and areas above 4,200 m.a.s.l. Today, pastoralists and farmers utilize different faunal and floral taxa in the three zones, partly as risk aversion strategies. In this paper, I review the zooarchaeological evidence dated between 6,000 and 1,000 BP...
Mammalian Enamel Stable Isotopic (δ13C, δ18O) Evidence for Environmental Change during the MSA-LSA Transition at the Kisese II Rockshelter, Tanzania (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Environmental perturbations are invoked as an influence of hominin speciation, dispersal and technological innovations. Archaeological occurrences preserving the transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Later Stone Age are critical to gauging environmental influences of human adaptations, yet there is a dearth of well-dated sites in eastern Africa. The...
Man does not go naked: Textilien und Handwerk aus afrikanischen und anderen Ländern; Festschrift für Renée Boser-Sarivaxévanis (1989)
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