Republic of Zimbabwe (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
526-550 (596 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A driving question in paleoanthropology is the extent of behavioral divergence in hominin species, particularly Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens (AMH) and Neanderthals. Generally, direct comparisons are restricted to Europe, where both hominin species were interacting within the same environmental constraints....
Taphonomic Comparisons of Stone Tool Transport: Surface vs. Excavated Collections (2018)
It has been argued that surface assemblages may provide insights into questions regarding large scale patterns of human behavior such as mobility and stone tool transport. However, excavated material is often preferred over surface assemblages due to concerns of potential biases introduced by the process of exposure. Here, we examine this claim by comparing measures of stone tool transport between surface and excavated assemblages. Surface and excavated lithic assemblages were collected from the...
Taphonomy of a modern landscape bone assemblage in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania (2017)
Bone assemblages from modern landscapes can help address a variety of issues, from the degree to which bone scatters accurately reflect local habitats to what variables condition the deposition, preservation, and spatial distribution of faunal material. In 2015, systematic pedestrian survey recovered ~350 bone specimens within a 200m x 200m area of open grassland about two kilometers north of Olduvai Gorge in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). Weathering profiles suggest an exposure,...
Technological Organization on the Paleo-Agulhas Plain: Robberg Lithic Technology from Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (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. Lithic technological organization is based on the landscape-scale distribution and availability of resources. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the landscape off the southern coast of South Africa was a different world than it is today. At its most extreme, the...
The Technological Sequence of Heuningneskrans (Limpopo, South Africa) around the Time of the Last Glacial Maximum (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. The southern African region comprises a mosaic of biomes influenced by various physical and atmospheric parameters. Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies would have exploited those biomes differently, which would have contributed to generate different lithic...
"Tell me what you are eating and I tell you who are you": Differences in Subsistence Systems of Elite and Non-Elite Gamo Society of the Ethiopia Highlands during Historical Times (2018)
There is little archaeobotanical data from Ethiopia, in this presentation, we will be comparing samples from two historic domestic archaeological sites spanning from late seventeen centuries to the late eighteen century A.D. within the same environment (Gamo highlands in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (SNNPR), Ethiopia) with the intention of examining status differences through subsistence remains. The food habits of past human societies are of importance because the act of...
Temporal and Spatial Variability in Pre-Aksumite Lithics from Mezber, NE. Ethiopia: Social and Economic Implications (2017)
With over 33,000 total excavated flaked stone artifacts and >18,000 analyzed from deposits in primary context, Mezber offers a unique opportunity to understand the role of lithics in Pre-Askumite societies. Using multiple raw materials and reduction sequences, knappers produced a wide array of LSA/Neolithic tools for domestic use, and a narrower range for specialized activities. Locally available chert was the most common raw material, although pXRF results indicate ≥3 as yet unknown distant...
Terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene settlements in West Turkana (northern Kenya): New radiocarbon dates (2017)
Lake Turkana in northern Kenya has played a central role in generating archaeological and paleoclimatic datasets relevant to studying key transitions in human prehistory. Generally, despite its rich Plio-Pleistocene hominin fossil record, the later prehistory of the basin, particularly the period between 50 and 10 ka, remains comparatively underexplored. In this paper, we discuss new radiocarbon dates from two recently excavated sites in West Turkana, namely Kokito 01 (GcJh11) and Kokito 02...
Terminal Pleistocene Lithic Technology and Adaptation from Bulbula River B1s4 Site, Ziway-Shala Basin, Ethiopia (2017)
Archaeological excavation which had been conducted in 2009 and 2010 in the Ziway- Shala Basin, close to the Bulbula River Canyon at B1s4 site, has yielded lithic assemblages and few faunal remains. Two human occupation horizons (PS1 and PS2) were identified which are separated by an occupational hiatus at the very end of the terminal Pleistocene. Analysis of debitage on both unit levels indicates the presence of similar features that lead us to assume that B1s4 lithic industry was oriented...
That High Lonesome Sound: The MIS 5a (~80 ka) Middle Stone Age Lithic Assemblages from Melikane Rockshelter, Highland Lesotho (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. Multidisciplinary research suggests Marine Isotope Stage 5 (~130–74 ka) was an important evolutionary stage in African deep history. Population expansion and growth spurred changes in material culture and the exploration of previously unoccupied regions and...
Tin isotopic data for archaeological samples (2019)
Tin isotopic data for archaeological samples analyzed during the course of this project.
Tin isotopic data for geological samples (2019)
Tin isotopic data for geological samples analyzed during the course of this project.
To build a ship: the VOC replica ship Duyfken (2001)
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...
Tool use across space in the Middle Pleistocene: Novel Techniques of Edge Damage Analysis at Elandsfontein, South Africa. (2017)
Although studies of lithic technology have been ongoing for over a century our knowledge of what tools were used for is still poorly resolved. Detailed analysis of microscopic damage has been the major focus studies of tool use. However, these studies are often limited to a subset of tools that have not undergone post-depositional damage and can be studied microscopically. Recently new approaches to damage patterns on the edges of simple flaked tools have been used to develop assemblage scale...
Touching the Colors of the Past: Ochre Painting Workshops at the Origins Centre Museum, South Africa (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ochre is a colorful thread that meanders through our human story. This iron-rich pigmentous rock became habitually used by Homo sapiens during the Late Pleistocene in Africa. It was later used in the creation of rock art paints, and is still used around the world in various ways. Ochre painting workshops are offered at Origins Centre Museum in...
Toward a Transformative Maritime Archaeology of the Slave Trade: Reflections from the Slave Wrecks Project Research Programs in Mozambique and South Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "To Move Forward We Must Look Back: The Slave Wrecks Project at 10 Years" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing on work in Mozambique and South Africa undertaken over the last five years this paper examines how the Slave Wrecks Project’s field research program and its stakeholder engagement initiatives have come to inform each other in profoundly transformative ways. Our investigations of specific slaver shipwrecks...
Toward an Automated Model for Archaeological Site Detection in Eastern Botswana, a Clustering Method (2018)
This paper is an effort to create a predictive model for archaeological sites in an area of Eastern Botswana. With a rather arid climate, much of Botswana’s ground surface (and archaeology) is easily visible to airborne and spaceborne sensors. Without sufficient training data for supervised classification, an iterative spectral clustering method was used to group spectrally similar pixels from multispectral imagery into a large number of spectrally distinct but unknown classes. By visually...
Towards an Interpretive Framework for Burnt Ostrich Eggshell: An Experimental Study (2017)
Ostrich eggs have been a valuable resource for Sub-Saharan populations for thousands of years, offering a rich nutritional source as well as a means of transporting water. While burned ostrich eggshell (OES) fragments are common at sites, it is difficult to determine whether they were subsistence refuse or the disposed remnants of canteens. Current tools for analyzing OES burning conditions involve expensive and time consuming isotopic analysis or scanning electron microscopy. This research aims...
Towns and Villages of an African Empire: Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) Archaeological Survey 2005-2008 (2017)
The Empire of Aksum was one of the earliest and most influential African complex polities, yet remains one of the world’s most scantly documented ancient civilizations. The Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) surveyed a 196-km2 area between the ancient capital city of Aksum and the Red Sea over four field seasons from 2005-2008. This work documented 137 archaeological sites, including 7 ancient towns larger than 6 hectares, and contributes a substantial body of data on geographies of...
Tracing Cannabis in the Historic Past: New Insights from Chemical Residue Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Today, marijuana consumption is becoming decriminalized across the Western world. This legal change is often followed by increased research activity, specifically regarding crop ‘improvement’ and the concentration of the plant’s psychoactive compounds. This situation resembles the process characterizing the commodification of tobacco during the Colonial...
Tracing Early Farming Communities in Southern Mozambique by Geophysical Prospection: Current State of Activities, Part 1 (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. In southern Africa, the appearance of pottery was first recognized in the context of Early Farming Communities (EFC) about 2000 BP. Increasingly, pottery can be linked to hunter-gatherers; therefore, southern Africa stands out as a place to investigate the contact between these two communities....
Tracing Early Farming Communities in Southern Mozambique by Geophysical Prospection: Current State of Activities, Part 2 (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. In southern Africa, the appearance of pottery was first recognized in the context of Early Farming Communities (EFC) about 2000 BP. Increasingly, pottery can be linked to hunter-gatherers, therefore southern Africa stands out as a place to investigate the contact between these two communities. In...
Tracing Late Quaternary Highland-Dryland Social Connectivity in Southern Africa with Ostrich Eggshell Bead Strontium Values: Preliminary Results (2018)
Humans have frequented southern Africa’s highest reaches – Lesotho’s Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains – for ≥90,000 years. As with many high mountain systems worldwide, the Maloti-Drakensberg cast a rainshadow over closely neighboring arid lowlands (the eastern Karoo Desert). Based on previous archaeological and paleoenvironmental work in highland Lesotho, researchers have posited that source populations for human dispersals into the mountain zone often originated in the Karoo, particularly during...
Tracing long-distance exchange of copper in southern Africa with lead isotopes (NSF BCS 1852958)
Overview: This proposal is for an interdisciplinary study of copper artefacts from multiple archaeological excavations in the southern third of the African continent; the sites that yielded these artefacts date between about 300 AD and 1850 AD. Many of these archaeological sites are a long way from any potential source of copper ore. We will undertake chemical and lead isotopic analyses of some 250 copper artefacts with the goal of identifying the parent ore deposits. To do this we will...
Tracking Paleoaridity through Multi-isotope Analyses of Ostrich Eggshells at Spitzkloof Rockshelter A, South Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotopes in ratite eggshells record information about the birds’ diet during shell formation, making them valuable proxies for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Here we present the results of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen stable isotope analyses in ostrich (Struthio camelus australis) eggshell (OES) collected in excavation at Spitzkloof A, a rock...