The Cyrenaican Prehistory Project 2012: the sixth season of excavations in the Haua Fteah cave

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Rabett ◽  
Lucy Farr ◽  
Evan Hill ◽  
Chris Hunt ◽  
Ross Lane ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Seismic Event ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Arid Environments ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Climatic Regime ◽  
Molluscan Fauna ◽  
Trench Area ◽  
Mis 5 ◽  
Deep Sounding

AbstractThe paper reports on the sixth season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project (CPP) undertaken in September 2012. As in the spring 2012 season, work focussed on the Haua Fteah cave and on studies of materials excavated in previous seasons, with no fieldwork undertaken elsewhere in the Gebel Akhdar. An important discovery, in a sounding excavated below the base of McBurney's 1955 Deep Sounding (Trench S), is of a rockfall or roof collapse conceivably dating to the cold climatic regime of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 (globally dated to c. 190–130 ka) but more likely the result of a seismic event within MIS 5 (globally dated to c. 130–80 ka). The sediments and associated molluscan fauna in Trench S and in Trench D, a trench being cut down the side of the Deep Sounding, indicate that this part of the cave was at least seasonally waterlogged during the accumulation, probably during MIS 5, of the ~6.5 m of sediment cut through by the Deep Sounding. Evidence for human frequentation of the cave in this period is more or less visible depending on how close the trench area was to standing water as it fluctuated through time. Trench M, the trench being cut down the side of McBurney's Middle Trench, has now reached the depth of the latest Middle Stone Age or Middle Palaeolithic (Levalloiso-Mousterian) industries. The preliminary indications from its excavation are that the transition from the Levalloiso-Mousterian to the blade-based Upper Palaeolithic or Late Stone Age Dabban industry was complex and perhaps protracted, at a time when the climate was oscillating between warm-stage stable environmental conditions and colder and more arid environments. The estimated age of the sediments, c. 50–40 ka, places these oscillations within the earlier part of MIS 3 (globally dated to 60–24 ka), when global climates experienced rapid fluctuations as part of an overall trend to increasing aridity and cold.

The Cyrenaican Prehistory Project 2009: the third season of investigations of the Haua Fteah cave and its landscape, and further results from the 2007–2008 fieldwork

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 55-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Barker ◽  
Annita Antoniadou ◽  
Huw Barton ◽  
Ian Brooks ◽  
Ian Candy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Glacial Cycle ◽  
Last Interglacial ◽  
Stratigraphic Sequence ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The Third ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Southern Side ◽  
Deep Sounding

AbstractThe paper reports on the third (2009) season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project, and on further results from the analysis of materials collected in the previous (2007 and 2008) fieldwork. Sediments in a 14 m-deep core drilled beside the McBurney trench provide an invaluable overview of the overall stratigraphic sequence, including at depths reached by the 1950s Deep Sounding but not yet investigated by the present project. Sampling of newly-exposed faces of the original excavation trench for dating (14C, ESR, OSL, U-series) and palaeoenvirommental indicators continued. Excavation was begun of sediments assigned to the early Holocene Libyco-Capsian (McBurney's Layer X), and of Pre-Aurignacian layers beside the top of the Deep Sounding. The Libyco-Capsian layers are particularly prolific in lithic debris, shells, and animal bones; preliminary analysis of the lithics suggests a development from Typical to Upper Capsian within the layers excavated in 2009. Geoarchaeological survey along the littoral to the west and east of the Haua Fteah identified complex sequences spanning most of the last interglacial-glacial cycle. Geoarchaeological survey south of the Haua Fteah characterized the major landforms of the Gebel Akhdar mountain and of the pre-desert and desert-edge zones further south, with Late Stone Age (Upper Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic) material being found especially on the southern side of the Gebel Akhdar, and Middle Stone Age (Middle Palaeolithic) material in the pre-desert and desert regions. The first suite of 14C dates (from charcoal samples taken in 2007) indicates the use of the Haua Fteah by Oranian hunter-gatherers during the Last Glacial Maximum and in the succeeding millennia, but not in the Younger Dryas cold/dry phase (c. 11,000–10,000 cal. BC), with Libyco-Capsian occupation resuming soon after the beginning of the Holocene c. 9000 cal. BC, suggesting that the cave, and perhaps the Gebel Akhdar in general, have a complex history as refugia for human settlement during the Pleistocene.

Archaeology of Botswana

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Klehm
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
Fish Exploitation ◽  
The Indian Ocean

The prehistory of Botswana concerns the sophisticated environmental knowledge, economic strategies, and social networks of the hunter-gatherer, pastoralists, and agropastoralist communities that have called Botswana home. Diverse subsistence strategies and societal structures ranging from heterarchical to hierarchical have coincided and responded flexibly to climate and environmental variables. Botswana has also played a central, but often overlooked, role in precolonial trade within the interior of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. Botswana contains well-preserved archaeological records for the Middle Stone Age, Late Stone Age, and Iron Age periods, including one of the highest concentrations of rock art in the world at Tsodilo Hills. The prehistory of Botswana extends over 100,000 years and includes successful, innovative, and adaptive occupations in a wide variety of environmental zones, from the Okavango Delta to the Kalahari sandveld, and better-watered hardveld areas in the east. Stone Age peoples adapted to both arid and wet lands, and the archaeological record includes early evidence for freshwater fish exploitation. Hunting with bone points dates to 35,000 years ago, with additional evidence for poisonous, reversible arrowheads between 21,000 and 30,000 years ago. Evidence for ritualized behavior through rock paintings, rock carvings, and the intentional destruction and abandonment of stone tools at Tsodilo Hills provides further insights to the social dimensions of early peoples. In the Iron Age, hunter-gatherer communities and agropastoralists participated in a regional and later protoglobal trade across the Indian Ocean for a thousand years before European involvement; as the regional economy intensified, large polities such as Bosutswe and even kingdoms such as the Butua state emerged, controlling access to resources such as game, ivory, salt, specularite, and gold. In the modern era, the historical archaeology of sites such as Old Palapye (Phalatswe) provide additional insight to historical documents that can contradict Eurocentric understandings of Botswana’s past.

The West African Stone Age

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Allsworth-Jones
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Terminus Post Quem ◽  
African Populations ◽  
Climatic Record ◽  
Reliable Classification

In terms of artefacts present, West Africa is not short of evidence relating to human occupation during the Quaternary. The problem hitherto has been one of context and dating; there has been some progress in this regard but poor preservation conditions still restrict the presence of organic remains prior to the beginning of the Late Stone Age (LSA). Nonetheless, an excellent climatic record for the last 520 kya has been established on the basis of cores obtained from Lake Bosumtwi. Stratified Acheulean sites have been excavated at Sansandé and Ravin Blanc on the Falémé River in eastern Senegal. The succeeding Sangoan is an entity for which a consistent and reliable classification remains to be achieved. Despite this, excavations at Anyama in the Ivory Coast have produced a sizeable quantity of material, with a terminus post quem thermoluminescence (TL) date of 254 ± 51 kya. Our knowledge of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) has been transformed by the work carried out at Ounjougou in Mali. More than twenty-five distinct archaeological occurrences have been detected, extending from about 75 to 25 kya. The MSA elsewhere is abundant, and at Adrar Bous is in place beneath the Aterian, but much of it lacks a good stratigraphic context. The following dry period, the Ogolian, must have had a dramatic effect on human settlement, and the majority of LSA sites postdate this episode. There is no apparent link between them and the MSA. Nonetheless, the LSA at Shum Lake in Cameroon does have 14C dates in the range 32,700–12,800 BP. The most significant LSA site is Iwo Eleru, notable for the presence of modern human remains with “archaic” characteristics. A parallel situation has been detected at Ishango in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo both indicating a hitherto unsuspected “deep substructure” in Late Pleistocene African populations.

A Southern African Perspective on the Contribution of Charcoal Analyses to Archaeology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Chikumbirike ◽  
Marion K. Bamford
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Woody Species ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Climate Reconstructions ◽  
Medicinal Use ◽  
African Perspective

Southern Africa has a long and rich archaeological record, ranging from the Oldowan lithics in the Sterkfontein valley and Wonderwerk Cave (about 2 Ma) to Iron Age smelting (less than one thousand years ago) in Zimbabwe. A brief overview of charcoal analyses indicates applications in such areas as dating, vegetation and climate reconstructions, fuel use, medicinal use, and the interpretation of human behavior. Some of the research done in the 20th century mainly focused on charcoal for the purpose of dating, but this has diversified in the 21st century to include other applications. The focus is on South African sites, but research from Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe is included. Southern Africa has a very diverse woody component with more than fifteen hundred species from a flora of more than twenty-five thousand species so the establishment of regional modern reference collections of charcoalified woods has been instrumental in improving identifications of the archaeological taxa. Early Middle Stone Age charcoal records show that a diversity of woody species was burned. By Middle Stone Age times, records show the selection of woods for fuel, tinder, and medicinal use as well as cooking of starchy rhizomes. Late Stone Age and Iron Age records, in addition, show the use of woods for smelting and intense fires.

scholarly journals Archaeology in the Public Space in Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Caleb A. Folorunso
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
African Region ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
West African Region ◽  
Early Stone Age

Nigeria, with over 200 million people, covers an area of 923,768 km2 and it occupies the eastern section of the West African region (Figure 1). The regions of Nigeria have prehistoric sites spanning from the Early Stone Age through the Middle Stone Age, the Late Stone Age/Neolithic to the Iron Age and the beginning of urbanization. Several historic empires, states and polities developed within the geographical area now occupied by Nigeria and had left archaeological relics.

scholarly journals Pleistocene Archaeology and Chronology of Putslaagte 8 (PL8) Rockshelter, Western Cape, South Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mackay ◽  
Zenobia Jacobs ◽  
Teresa E. Steele
Keyword(s):  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Material Selection ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Before Present ◽  
Later Stone Age ◽  
Occupational Patterns ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Mis 5

We report on excavations of a small rock shelter — Putslaagte 8 (PL8) — located on the arid interior fringe of South Africa’s Fynbos biome. The shelter preserves a long sequence of Holocene and late Pleistocene occupation dating back beyond 75,000 years BP. This paper presents data on the technological, faunal and chronological sequence. Occupation is markedly pulsed and includes three late Pleistocene Later Stone Age (LSA) units (macrolithic, Robberg and early LSA), as well as several distinct Middle Stone Age (MSA) components from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3–5. Pulsing may reflect the arid and possibly marginal environments in which the shelter is situated, and to that end some elements of the sequence contrast with occupational patterns towards the coast. Viewed in a regional setting PL8 suggests: 1) complementarity of resource movements between the coast and interior in terminal MIS 2; 2) distinctions in material selection, and possibly technology, between the coast and interior in earlier MIS 2; 3) an MSA lasting to at least 40,000 years before present; 4) a weak Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort in the interior; 5) possibly distinct periods of denticulate manufacture within the MIS 5 MSA; 6) highly localised patterns of material acquisition in the earlier MSA.

Lithic traditions: tool-making

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco J. Ayala ◽  
Camilo J. Cela-Conde
Keyword(s):  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Eastern Asia ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Modern Mind ◽  
Mode 2 ◽  
Mode 3

This chapter is dedicated to the lithic traditions. It analyzes the pre-cultural cores and flakes produced by chimpanzees for cracking nuts and the evidence of their using bones as tools. Next, the chapter describes the first lithic tradition (Mode 1 or Oldowan), the transition from Mode 1 to 2 (Acheulean culture), and the process for producing the first Acheulean tool, the biface. Mode 2 dispersal separates, by means of the “Movius line,” the localities in Africa, Europe, and Western Asia, which display bifaces, and those in Eastern Asia, which lack them. The cultural use of fire precedes the transition from Mode 2 to Mode 3 (Mousterian). The description of the Mousterian culture and the transition to Mode 4 (Aurignacian) raise the issue of the human “modern mind.” The transition from the Middle Stone Age to the African Late Stone Age ends this chapter.

scholarly journals A West African Middle Stone Age site dated to the beginning of MIS 5: Archaeology, chronology, and paleoenvironment of the Ravin Blanc I (eastern Senegal)

2021 ◽  
Vol 154 ◽  
pp. 102952
Author(s):  
Katja Douze ◽  
Laurent Lespez ◽  
Michel Rasse ◽  
Chantal Tribolo ◽  
Aline Garnier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
West African ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Mis 5

Blade and Burin Industries near Renigunta on the South-East Coast of India

1969 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 83-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. L. K. Murty
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Andhra Pradesh ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Horizontal Distribution ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Early Stone Age ◽  
Homogeneous Pattern ◽  
Two Phases

During the first quarter of this century, not much was known about the Indian Stone Ages and only two phases, Palaeolithic and Neolithic (including microliths), were recognized. Some of the earlier discoveries recorded by Robert Bruce Foote, Coggin Brown, Cammiade, Miles Burkitt, De Terra, Paterson and others gave an impetus for the later researchers and the Stone Age cultural sequence began to take a clear shape. The most significant among the later discoveries is the identification of a distinct culture by H. D. Sankalia, which is now designated as the Middle Stone Age, and the extent of its distribution is now well established. Prehistorians who launched a systematic survey unearthed the remnants of the stone using populations from different parts of the country, viz., the Panjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Mysore, Andhra Pradesh and Madras recognizing three phases, The Early Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age and the Late Stone Age, occupying the time span of Pleistocene and Early Holocene times.The material culture that represents the Stone Age Communities in various parts of the country displays a homogeneous pattern of development. The Early Stone Age is followed by the Middle Stone Age which in most of the regions gave way to the Late Stone Age; however, a blade and burin industry with a discontinuous horizontal distribution is known in a few regions between the Middle and Late Stone Ages.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document