Crossing Deserts and Seas in the Late Pleistocene: Implications of the Aduma MSA Assemblages, Middle Awash, Ethiopia

Summary

The ca. 3 km2 Aduma region of the Middle Awash region, Ethiopia, incorporates a number of stratified sites within a matrix of sands and silts dating to between 180 ka and ca 80 ka.(Yellen et al 2005). With the exception of one possibly earlier site with late Acheulean bifaces (A-14, Clark et al 2003), all sites yielded diagnostic Middle Stone Age cores and most also contained typical retouched bifacial and unifacial points. In contrast to the earlier assemblages of Gademotta (Sahle et al 2012) point, core and flake sizes diminish through the sequence (Brooks et al 2005) to almost microlithic size ranges and suggest the development of composite projectile weaponry. The cores include Nubian and bifacial core-axe reduction strategies, which together with the points suggest wider interactions both with the Nile Valley and across the Red Sea.

This research was part of the Middle Awash Research Project under the overall direction of T. D. White, B. Asfaw, Y. Beyene and the late J.D. Clark. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, (Grant # 9521879).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Parting the Red Sea: Late Pleistocene Lithic Variability and Human Dispersals in the Horn of Africa and Arabia

Keywords

Spatial Coverage