Africa: Southern Africa (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (109 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Great Zimbabwe (GZ) is key for understanding precolonial African urban systems. Cattle bones are some of the most common materials recovered from GZ and have played a central role in interpreting the ways power was enacted at the site over time. Scholars use dental wear and eruption data from cattle molars and long bone epiphyseal fusion patterns to argue...
Reconstructing the Amanzi Springs Acheulian Site, South Africa, 50 Years after Hilary Deacon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Amanzi Springs Acheulian site in South Africa was first excavated by Ray Inskeep and then Hilary Deacon for his Masters project in the 1960s. Deacon excavated two spring he designated Areas 1 and 2 and this work suggested that Amanzi Springs preserved stratified Acheulian bearing deposits, something rare in the South African archaeological record. The...
Silcrete Heat Treatment Technology during the MIS 5/4 Transition at Pinnacle Point 5-6 and Vleesbaai, South Africa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The heat treatment of silcrete is an important technological strategy during the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in South Africa. Heat-treating silcrete improves its quality for tool making and use. Although it is found as early as ~162,000 years ago (ka) at Pinnacle Point 13B, heat-treated silcrete does not become common in South African MSA assemblages until...
Social Learning Among recent Hunter-Gatherers: Jun/wasi Examples (2018)
While interest in the role of social learning in the Paleolithic has focused extensively on stone artifacts, very little attention has been paid to social learning in living forager populations. In this paper we report on many years of fieldwork among the Jun/wasi of northwestern Botswana and Namibia. We argue that most cultural transmission in relation to domains such as technology, language and food acquisition was informal, and was acquired in the context of close daily relationships between...
Social Life and Social Death among Cape Slaves (2018)
A central imperative in historical archaeology is to produce original information and insights that cannot be derived from historical records. Sophisticated analyses of slave burials that combine the physical elements of burial grounds, coffins, and grave goods, with the biology and chemical signatures of the human remains, can identify and source first-generation slaves, and help to infer the social bonds reflected in their burial. Orlando Patterson has defined slavery as "social death" to...
Sourcing Etendeka Dolerites in the Stone Age of Namibia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Where Is Provenance? Bridging Method, Evidence, and Theory for the Interpretation of Local Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Basalts and dolomites, associated with the Etendeka Large Igneous Province (ELIP), in northwestern Namibia, often make up the bulk of lithic raw materials present in archaeological assemblages from the region. Different igneous formations within the ELIP can readily be distinguished...
Spatial Variation in Tool Use: Acheulean Forager Patterning at Elandsfontein, South Africa (2018)
Despite more than a century of scholarship, our knowledge about the use of stone artifacts remains relatively sparse. Major advances in the analysis of microscopic wear have been the primary focus of much previous research. However, post-depositional processes and the logistics of microscopic analysis limit sample sizes in these studies. New approaches that quantify macroscopic damage patterns on the assemblage scale provide a robust basis for drawing behavioral inferences about hominin tool...
Stone Age Archaeology in the Elephant River Valley, Southwestern Mozambique (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. Located between modern-day South Africa and Tanzania, both of which have well-known and extensive Stone Age records, Mozambique and its Stone Age sequence remain largely unknown in the broader context of African Pleistocene prehistory. This is despite the country’s critical position linking...
Stone Age Archaeology in the Lower Save River Valley, Southern Mozambique (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. Southern Mozambique, with extensive Quaternary-aged deposits, shows great potential to inform on early modern human behavior. Despite its geographic proximity to well-known southern African hotspots of Stone Age archaeology, southern Mozambique represents a major...
Subsistence Technology in Early Iron Age Botswana (2018)
Analysis of the faunal assemblage from Thabadimasego, an Early Iron Age site in northeastern Botswana, contributes to the growing notion that hunting played a larger-than-expected role in the subsistence pattern of the area’s communities. Beyond understanding what they ate, what do the faunal remains tell us about the subsistence technology of Botswana’s Early Iron Age? Recent studies have focused on metallurgy and ceramic technology, but faunal patterns can provide information on the use of...
A Tale of Three Substrates: Effects of Trampling on Ostrich Eggshell and Applicability to the Archaeological Record (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Few taphonomic experiments have considered Ostrich eggshell, despite its ubiquity at archaeological sites in Africa and Asia. This experiment seeks to fill some of the gaps in taphonomic knowledge by determining the effect of trampling on ostrich eggshell. Ostrich eggshell fragments were photographed, distributed across the surface of sand, soil, or gravel,...
A Taphonomic Comparison of Two Late Pleistocene Zooarchaeological Assemblages in Northwest Italy and South Africa (2021)
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....
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
Trade and Exchange in the Greater Mapungubwe Landscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of the trade and exchange networks systems in Southern Africa during AD 700 to AD 1300 has mostly been drawn from sites located in the Shashe Limpopo Confluence Area (SCLA); a drainage basin that is positioned on the borders of Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. This has led to bias interpretations and conceptualisation on...
An Undisturbed Earlier Stone Age Locality on the Southern Coast of South Africa, Exposed by Fire (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Knysna Estuary and River Basin on the southern coast of South Africa provided attractive resources for Pleistocene foragers. Isolated Earlier Stone Age (ESA) finds, including large bifacially flaked core tools, are commonly found in upland areas around the basin, particularly during construction projects, but dense vegetation cover has thus far prevented...
Unmodified Cobbles and Boulders from the Middle Stone Age Occupation of Witberg 1, Southern Kalahari, South Africa (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. Witberg 1 is an open-air Middle Stone Age (MSA) occupation within diatom-rich sediments in the southern Kalahari, suggestive of a small ancient lake system (~360,000–140,000 years-ago). The occupation horizon is dense with flakes, blades, cores, and MSA points, mostly less than 10 cm. However, there are numerous...
Update on Research at the Site of Waterfall Bluff, Eastern Cape Province, 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. Excavations at Waterfall Bluff, South Africa, document evidence of occupation in a persistent coastal context from MIS3 to the Middle Holocene. Remains of marine mollusks and fish show for the first time that coastal foraging was a component of some hunter-gatherer...