scholarly journals An Archaeological Study of Early Farming Settlements on Iresi Hills

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1.2) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Olusegun Akanni Opadeji
Keyword(s):  
Lower Layer ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Ground Stone ◽  
Southwest Nigeria ◽  
Cultural Layers ◽  
Early Farming

Recent Investigation of an archaeological site in southwest Nigeria during the Late Stone Age revealed additional information about the cultural development of the area. On Iresi Hills two rock shelters (Ajaye and Cherubim & Seraphim) were investigated in two seasons from 2017 to 2018 during which pottery, ground stone axes and microlithics were excavated. Although there is no clear break in the stratigraphy, the findings show clear demarcation between two cultural layers. The upper layer contains pottery, microlithics and ground stone axes, and ochre while the lower layer is characterized by microlithics only. The site presented a date of about Cal 5653 BP which coincides with a short dry period in the area. Tis paper reports the occupation in Iresi, in southwest Nigeria with a view to fill the gap in the chronology and to interrogate the evidence for Late Stone Age in terms of the culture that existed in between 12000YBP of Iwo Eleru and 2000YBP of Itaakpa and the influence of a change in environment of southwest Nigeria and West Africa in general.  

Archaeology in Benin

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Connah
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Benin City ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Ground Stone ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
The City

Excavations and fieldwork in and around Benin City in the years 1961–4 have established the outlines of an archaeological sequence. This sequence is based on radiocarbon dates for stratified deposits, on a statistical examination of pottery form and decoration, and on datable European imports. The sequence suggested by the evidence extends from about the thirteenth century A.D. to the present time, although the survival of locally found ground stone axes in Benin ritual indicates that the area may well have been inhabited since Late Stone Age times. There is evidence for the artistic use of copper and its alloys from at least the thirteenth century onwards, but it is not known how long it had already been in use. Smithed and chased tin bronzes were found in a thirteenth-century context, whereas cast leaded brass was found in use in a nineteenth-century context. There is little evidence for lost-wax casting in Benin in early times. The writer suggests that future archaeological work should make the origins and early development of the city a priority.

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.

Ground-Stone Tools and Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence in Southwest Asia: Implications for the Transition to Farming

1994 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine I. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Food Processing ◽  
Younger Dryas ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Plant Food ◽  
Southwest Asia ◽  
Processing Methods ◽  
Plant Foods ◽  
Ground Stone ◽  
Early Farming ◽  
Wild Cereals

Ground-stone tools and hunter-gatherer subsistence in late Pleistocene southwest Asia are examined in light of ethnographic and experimental data on processing methods essential for consumption of various plant foods. In general, grinding and pounding appear to be labor-intensive processing methods. In particular, the labor required to make wild cereals edible has been widely underestimated, and wild cereals were unlikely to have been “attractive” to foragers except under stress conditions. Levantine ground-stone tools were probably used for processing diverse plants. The earliest occurrence of deep mortars coincides with the glacial maximum, camp reoccupations, the onset of increasingly territorial foraging, and the earliest presently known significant samples of wild cereals. Two major episodes of intensification in plant-food processing can be identified in the Levant, coinciding respectively with the earliest evidence for sedentism (12,800-11,500 B.P.) and the transition to farming (11,500-9600 B.P.). The latter episode was characterized by rising frequencies of grinding tools relative to pounding tools, and suggests attempts to maximize nutritional returns of plants harvested from the limited territories characteristic of sedentary foraging and early farming. This episode was probably encouraged by the Younger Dryas, when density and storability of foods may have outweighed considerations of processing costs.

A Local Late Stone Age Development

1954 ◽  
Vol 9 (35) ◽  
pp. 103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ione Rudner ◽  
Jalmar Rudner
Keyword(s):  
Stone Age ◽  
Late Stone Age

scholarly journals Keeping the Frontier: Steps “Towards Neolithization” in the Eastern Gulf of Finland

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1244-1257
Author(s):  
Dmitriy V. Gerasimov
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Gulf Of Finland ◽  
Forest Zone ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Sociocultural Development ◽  
The Face ◽  
Early Farming

Abstract This article is an attempt to understand the driving forces behind the process of Neolithization in the Eastern Europe Forest zone, where the consumption economy existed till the Bronze or even till the Early Iron Age. Main peculiarities of the sociocultural development in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland region (EGF) on the transition from Mesolithic to farming societies (sixth – first ka. BC) are discussed in relation to the changes in material culture, subsistence strategy, communication system and settlement pattern. The process of neolithization lasted there for several thousand years. Overview of the dynamics of the social and cultural development in the region revealed several phases of substantial changes in archeological materials (presumably reflecting considerable sociocultural changes). These changes happened later than in the neighboring territories and were preceded by dramatic environmental transformations that affected prehistoric communities in the coastal zone. For the population of the region, innovations could be considered as not “steps toward,” but “retreat in the face of” neolithization. Resistance of the population of EGF to the innovations could be based on environmental conditions that were extremely favorable for hunter–gatherers’ subsistence, but made farming (especially early farming) rather risky.

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.

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