Africa: East Africa (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (77 Records)
Engaged archaeology and public anthropology depend on the goodwill, or at least tolerance, of numerous publics. This is frequently understood to mean local communities and nearby residents, but projects can live or die according to the will of groups less often discussed as part of the target public: authority structures such as permitting agencies or even national governments. How do such organizations figure into the "public" of public scholarship? What happens when research is pressured to...
Getting to Know the Neighbors: Commensal Insights into Human-Ecosystem Dynamics (2018)
Advances in zooarchaeological method and theory, increased attention to the recovery and analysis of microfaunal remains, and multidisciplinary collaborative research have generated increasingly nuanced understandings of past human-animal relationships. This paper provides a brief introduction to archaeological investigations of commensal fauna, highlighting the myriad ways that research focused on the commensal niche sheds new light on past societies and ecosystems. A case study from Makangale...
GIS-Based Approaches to Obsidian Studies in Eastern Africa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Material Sourcing and Provenience Studies in Africa" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of obsidian transport during the Late Pleistocene of eastern Africa have been largely productive for reconstructing raw material procurement patterns and movement across landscapes. Due to a limited sample, however, these studies are often descriptive of particular sites and related explicitly to material...
The Glass Beads of Songo Mnara, Tanzania (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Songo Mnara lies on a small island of the same name just to the south of Kilwa Kisiwani in Tanzania. It was occupied mainly in the fifteenth century CE and its assemblage of 7,444 glass beads provides us with a unique view into Indian Ocean trade to East Africa in this period. A comprehensive study of...
Habitat Preferences in Early Hominins and the Origin of the Human Lineage (2018)
Early hominins, such as australopithecines, are characterized by bipedality and enlarged posterior teeth. Originally, these traits were thought to be adaptations to an open environment. However, discoveries of older hominins, such as Ardipithecus that were possibly only occasionally bipedal and did not have enlarged teeth, have refocused the origins of early hominins within a much more closed, wooded setting. Even the later australopithecines are currently cast as inhabitants of mosaic...
Hilary Duke and Sonia Harmand—A New Approach to the Evolution of Early Pleistocene Hominin Cognition and Technological Change: Examining the Technological Context of LCT Emergence 1.8–1.76 Ma at Kokiselei, West Turkana, Kenya (2018)
The eastern African Early Pleistocene witnessed critical shifts in climate, environment, hominin anatomy and behavior. The lithic record shows change within this broader context. After 1.8 Ma, Large Cutting Tools (LCTs), such as bifaces, entered the hominin lithic repertoire. These artifacts are widely viewed as the first evidence of lithic shaping. Many archaeologists theorize both cognitive and practical differences between "flaking" and "shaping" among knapping strategies. Most of these...
Historical Ecology of Demographic and Economic Change in the Highlands of Western Kenya: Archaeobotanical and Mycological Evidence (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last several millennia of cultural history in the western Kenyan highlands have been marked both by punctuated periods of considerable demographic and economic change, and by continuous in-situ processes of genetic, linguistic, and economic interaction and admixture. Historical linguistic and archaeological models of the peopling of this region have, among...
Imports and Outcrops: Characterizing the Baantu Obsidian Source and Artifacts from Mochena Borago Rockshelter, Wolaita, Ethiopia, Using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Material Sourcing and Provenience Studies in Africa" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Forty-two obsidian samples from the Baantu obsidian source, including 25 outcrop samples and 17 surface artifacts, were characterized using portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. These source data were then compared to 116 obsidian artifacts from Mochena Borago Rockshelter, excavated from levels dated to >50 ka BP...
Indian Ocean Comparative Dimensions of Slavery: Resistance and Memory from Mauritius (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Approaches to Slavery and Unfree Labour in Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The materiality of slavery has received much attention over recent decades. Unequivocally focused on the Atlantic experience, comparative models from the Indian Ocean serve to enrich our understanding of slavery on a global scale. The body of literature on slave artefacts, mortuary practices, and diet highlight the nuances...
Indian Ocean Glass Beads from Miyoba Mound in the Kafue River Floodplain, Zambia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reports on an assemblage of Indian Ocean glass beads excavated from the Middle Iron Age mound of Miyoba in western Zambia, at the hook of the Kafue River. Miyoba was a long-occupied settlement during the late first and early second millennium CE represented by approximately 5 m of occupation debris that includes house...
Inferring Behavior from Damage Patterns: Bipolar Knapping and Nutcracking (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Little is known about behaviors associated with the percussive technology of the Early Stone Age (ESA). Primatology provides a rare opportunity to observe how percussive behaviors produce damage patterns on stone tools. Although primate behavior provides a framework for inferring behaviors associated with ESA percussive tools, the distinction between...
The Influence of Raw Material Availability on Lithic Assemblage Variability in the Koobi Fora Fm. (Kenya) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A defining feature of human tool use compared to our closest living relatives is the transport of tools. This distinction is most evident in the Early Stone Age where transport is a feature of even the earliest industries. Spatial variability in raw material proportions has often been assumed to reflect transport patterns; however, these measures must be...
Iron Age Agriculture at the Multi-Component Site of Kakapel Rockshelter, Western Kenya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The domestication of African cereals and origins and spread of plant agriculture in eastern Africa remain poorly understood. Questions about the timing of farming, crop packages, and correlations with migration events, endure largely due to a lack of paleobotanical recovery and high-resolution dating on inland eastern African sites. In this...
"The Land is now OK": Three Centuries of Marakwet Settlement on the Elgeyo Escarpment, Northwest Kenya (2019)
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
Maritime Archaeology and Slavery in Mauritius: Le Coureur Shipwreck (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Approaches to Slavery and Unfree Labour in Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Analyzing slavery through the lens of shipwrecks makes a significant contribution to the understanding of labor migration. However, beyond the labor diaspora, there are social dynamics that can be view through maritime heritage. The ‘vessel’, the ship itself, was a vehicle of culture contact and the study of the artefacts...
Mauritian Indenture in the Indian Ocean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Approaches to Slavery and Unfree Labour in Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a case study of an African/Indian Ocean plantation that focuses on daily lives of indentured laborers during the 19th century. Mauritius’s Bras d’Eau National Park was a sugar estate that functioned from 1786 to 1868. During the 1830s, French colonial landowners shifted from a reliance on enslaved...
Measuring Movement: The Influence of Scraper Reduction Models on the Early Pleistocene (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The identification of the “Frison Effect” on Middle Paleolithic scraper variability has had numerous subsequent implications. The initial influence revolved around our understanding of the then-prevailing use of typological distinctions in the Middle Paleolithic. However, the quantitative...