MAPPING THE STONE AGE IN MOZAMBIQUE: PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Summary

Under the auspices of the Portuguese colonial government, Lereno Barradas and Santos Junior (within the Anthropological Mission of Mozambique) carried out field surveys that resulted in a data set that includes a total of more than 100 sites, mostly attributed to the Stone Age. This early research added to the previous work of Van Riet Lowe in the Limpopo Valley, in southern Mozambique.

Recently, Mozambique has emerged as a crucial geographic area to understand human evolution. Specifically, its coastal location between southern and eastern Africa is ideal for testing ideas about the appearance of Anatomically Modern Humans and their relation to early coastal adaptations. Nevertheless, the number of researchers and projects focusing on this topic in Mozambique is still limited because of a general predominance of interest in later periods among archaeologists working in Mozambique.

Based on the early maps from Santos Junior and more recent data acquired through various projects, we present preliminary maps for the Stone Age prehistory of Mozambique. The map is based on a critical evaluation of the sites, and a review of some of the materials found at many of those sites, that are presently curated at the IICT in Lisbon, Portugal.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage