Mochena Borago Rockshelter and the Southwest Ethiopian Highlands as a Late Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherer Refugium: The Current State of Research

Summary

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.

One of the long-term goals of the Southwest Ethiopia Archaeological Project (SWEAP) is to test the hypothesis that the SW Ethiopian highlands were a major refugium for plants, animals, and hunter-gatherer groups during the very arid periods of MIS 4 (~72-59 ka) and MIS 2 (~27-12 ka). In highland Wolaita, SW Ethiopia, Mochena Borago Rockshelter (MB) allows us to explore the archaeological record of these critical time periods. Within the 70-m wide shelter, excavations since 2015 have focused on the central area, revealing deposits that clearly date to >50 ka, and probably much earlier. Framed by current knowledge of early Late Pleistocene paleoenvironments in the Horn of Africa, we review recent research at MB, including 1) problems and prospects of chronometrically dating >50ka deposits by obsidian hydration, argon/argon and tephrochronology; 2) analysis of lithic (flaked stone) assemblages from these deposits, which represent Mode 3, 4 and 5 technologies (including Nubian), but have lower proportions of obsidian and higher percentages of non-obsidian volcanic toolstone than younger contexts in the MB Pleistocene sequence; 3) higher frequencies of ground stone artifacts, many of which are stained with ochre most likely retrieved from the shelter walls; and 4) current and future archaeobotanical research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26003