Africa: Southern Africa (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (109 Records)
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...
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...
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...
The Many Meanings of Red: Ochre Use through Time in Southern Africa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From c.100 000 years ago, ochre pieces were habitually collected and used at Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa. This earthy iron-rich rock has been continually used since then and still has many applications today, such as pigment, sunscreen or body paint for ritual purposes. Although a range of colors were...
Microanalysis of Late Stone Age Rock Art Ochre Pigments in Eswatini (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Eswatini is home to several rock art sites of the Late Stone Age in Southern Africa. Ochres, iron-oxide rich pigments, are present in many of these sites but their compositions are yet unknown. Previous studies of ochres have shown the potential for the identification of trade, resource management, and other aspects of human behavior. The analysis of...
The Middle Stone Age Goes Alpine: Preliminary Results of New Excavations at Ha Soloja Rockshelter, Lesotho, Africa (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While settlement of the world's high plateaus represents a final chapter in Homo sapiens’ global colonization, there were surprisingly early dispersals into high mountain systems. Africa possesses evidence for an early hominin presence in such settings, yet the processes by which human-highland engagements unfolded remain obscure. This paper introduces a...
Modeling Mobility and Lithic Raw Material Transport in the Late Pleistocene along the Southern Coast of South Africa (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. Understanding how hunter-gatherer groups move around the landscape is essential for answering questions about human behavioral ecology and evolution of the social landscape. Lithic raw material proveniencing sheds light on how far people in the past were traveling for toolstone and...
More Than Just Pretty Things: Taphonomic and Behavioral Observations from the Unworked Ostrich Eggshell Assemblage Recovered from Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Grassridge Rockshelter demonstrates one of the largest assemblages of ostrich eggshell beads and preforms in southern Africa that dates to the mid-Holocene. The site, located in the interior of the Eastern Cape of South Africa, therefore reflects an intensive use of ostrich eggshell as a raw material source for the production of...
The Msikaba Red Sand Dunes: Middle Pleistocene Lithic Technological Variability in Pondoland, 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 Msikaba Red Sand Dunes along South Africa's Pondoland coast are a recently discovered open-air site complex that documents Middle Pleistocene lithic technological and morphological change. The deposit comprises ancient dune surfaces stacked over time with repeated sea-level highstand events. Initial excavations and...
Namib IV: Assessing Acheulean Technology in Relation to Depositional Processes in an Arid Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Namib IV is an Earlier and Middle Stone Age interdunal pan site in the Namib Desert’s Sand Sea. New investigations of the this hyper-arid landscape are piecing together the hominin occupations in relation to dry/wet climatic cycles. Hominins at Namib IV occupied the site multiple times...
Narabeb Pan: Exploring Middle Stone Age Archaeology of the Namib Sand Sea (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The vast Sand Sea region of the Namib desert in western Namibia has begun to yield evidence of long-term human occupations. In the past decades, several Early Stone Age (ESA) sites have been identified and described but the Middle Stone Age (MSA) human presence remains poorly understood. Here we describe in detail the newly documented site of Narabeb Pan,...
A Neurobiological Explanation for Spheroids as Embodied Cognition (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spheroids (i.e., intentionally shaped or gathered round rocks) first appeared about 1.8 million years ago. Sahnouni et al. (1997) proposed that they were by-products from core reduction knapping. Walker (2008) concluded they served as evidence of modern-like behavior in a belief system. Wilson et al. (2016) viewed them as throwing-affordances for killing...
New Excavations at Border Cave: Preliminary Reflections on Stratigraphy and Site Formation Processes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Border Cave rock shelter, formed in Early Jurassic fragmental rocks of the Jozini Formation on the western scarp of the Lebombo Mountains, KwaZulu-Natal, has a long history of archaeological investigation starting with Raymond Dart in 1934. Phases of informal and formal excavations have yielded remarkable archaeological assemblages including five hominin...
On the Edge of the Kalahari: New Excavations of the Middle Stone Age Deposits at Olieboomspoort, 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. Olieboomspoort is one of the few rockshelters in South Africa documenting phases of use going back to the Acheulean and up until the very end of the Later Stone Age. Previous work has focused on the recent phases, consistent with traces left by the last...
One Hundred Years of Mozambican Archaeology: Past, Present, Future, and Challenges (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. Mozambique, as a country located in the East as well as Southern Africa, has a diversity of important archaeological remains uncovered in the last 100 years as a result of individual enthusiasm and systematic academic research. However, large parts of this past remain poorly explored and...
Out with a Whimper or a Bang? Hunter-Gatherer Response to the End of the African Humid Period in Northern Malawi (2018)
The modern climate of the southernmost African Rift Valley is characterized by a single warm-wet season, which receives almost all annual precipitation. The other six months are arid, and surface water is confined to major river and lake features. In the northern basin of Lake Malawi, at the southern extent of the modern ITCZ, core records show a rapid increase in water surface temperatures peaking at ~5.5 ka, followed by a major expansion of grasslands. This coincides with the end of the...
Paleoenvironmental Conditions of Holocene Southern Mozambique: Multiproxy Data from Coastal Lake Nyalonzelwe Cores (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To understand the role climate played in facilitating the development and expression of human behaviors, our interdisciplinary research team cored the interdunal Nyalonzelwe lake (Inhambane coast, southern Mozambique) during the summer of 2019. Lake Nyalonzelwe sits 5 m above MSL and is sheltered from the Indian Ocean by a Pleistocene dune system. Its...
Paleolandscape Reconstruction Using Geoproxy Evidence at Erfkroon, a Middle to Later Stone Age Occupation in South Africa’s Continental Interior (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Erfkroon is situated in South Africa’s Modder River Valley and is known for its well-stratified fluvial landscape and archaeologically rich terrace systems. The Orangia terrace is the subject of ongoing investigations because it is characterized by abundant in situ alluvial deposits containing Middle and Later Stone Age artifact assemblages in context with...
Paleoproteomic Perspectives on the Subsistence Decisions of Later Stone Age Herders in Namaqualand, South Africa (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic-bound protein characterization, or paleoproteomics, can provide vital insight into the species-specific dietary decisions preserved in the pottery of past populations. This insight is particularly relevant for understanding the subsistence choices of Later Stone Age (LSA) herders living in the Namaqualand coastal desert of South...
Patterns in Robberg Tool Manufacture and Discard at the Open-Air Locality of Uitspankraal 9 Western Cape, 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. Robberg technology is found across southern Africa, but currently is known primarily from cave and rock shelter contexts. This study characterizes the nature of the assemblage from a discrete cluster of Robberg artifacts at the open-air locality of Uitspankraal 9 (UPK9) in the Doring River catchment of the Cederberg Mountains. UPK9 is situated on the banks of...
Petrographic Perspectives on Ceramic Technology and Provenance in Northern Botswana (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 45 years, Wilmsen, James Denbow, and others have recovered ceramics from nearly thirty excavated sites, in the northern half of Botswana. Together with Phenyo Thebe and Ann Griffiths, Wilmsen has also sampled clays and sands throughout the region, has obtained samples of raw materials, and prepared pastes and pots...
Post-Depositional Ridge Rounding on Banded Ironstone and the Condition of the Fauresmith Artifacts at Bestwood, 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. Transitional lithics have the potential to inform researchers about innovation during significant periods of human evolution. The Fauresmith, an Early Stone Age (ESA) to Middle Stone Age (MSA) transitional industry in South Africa, is marked by the appearance of blade technology and composite tools alongside continuing traditions of large cutting tools. This...