African Archaeological Review最新文献

The period between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries in Old Dongola, Sudan, marks a significant political and religious transition. The Makurian kingdom collapsed, and in the sixteenth century, the city became subordinate to the Funj Sultanate. Simultaneously, domestic architecture exhibited a high level of uniformity, with urban space dominated by two-room houses clustered in compounds with a shared courtyard. In these transformative conditions, the seeming persistence of household requires explanation. This paper examines residues of human actions, applying a multielemental analysis of domestic floors of four house compounds dated from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. It allowed us to understand domestic space in intensive terms, as created by everyday domestic activities. The analysis of macro- and micro-residues resulted in the identification of various ways particular households engaged with domestic space. In this study, the role of heterogeneous domestic space played in the persistence and changeability of households was discussed, particularly how the striated residential units coded relations of dwellers, while the smooth open spaces had creative potential. Lastly, it is proposed that the temporality of households did not align with the temporality of the political changes in the city.

The Mumba rockshelter, located in the northwest of Lake Eyasi is key to understanding the Stone Age in East Africa. The stratigraphy of the site spans the last 130 ka BP and comprises levels from the Middle Stone Age, the Later Stone Age, the Pastoral Neolithic, and the Iron Age. In terms of the Middle Stone Age (MSA), Mumba has helped to define two lithic industries: Sanzako (130 ka BP) and Kisele (90–50 Ka BP) that characterize this techno-complex in northern Tanzania. The Sanzako industry was defined based on level VI-B at Mumba, which was excavated in 1938 by Köhl-Larssen. Here we present the study of the lithic assemblage excavated by Mehlman between 1977 and 1981. Mehlman subdivided this unit into three sublevels (Lower, Middle, and Upper), all of which remained unanalyzed and therefore, unpublished. The main features of the lithic assemblages found in the three sublevels are the presence of discoid, Levallois, and bipolar knapping methods. Additionally, the retouched tools are mainly sidescrapers, denticulates, and notches. This recent research enables us to understand the Sanzako industry in more detail, as well as its nature within the chronocultural framework of the MSA in northern Tanzania.

This paper describes the lithic aggregates from Sitwe 23 (SW23), a Stone Age locality in a previously unstudied region of the northern Luangwa Valley, Zambia. This area yielded two surface lithic scatters containing abundant artifacts derived from Pleistocene sediments on uplifted terrain and exposed by recent erosion on two adjacent terraces. The scatters are time-averaged palimpsests formed by deflation, but most of the lithics lack evidence of significant fluvial transport or post-depositional damage, indicating minimal horizontal displacement. Typological and attribute analyses of samples from both spurs reveal predominantly simple and expedient core and flake technologies, as well as sophisticated biface manufacture and Levallois technique producing flakes and points that are differentially distributed between the terraces. The artifacts identified in this analysis include types conventionally considered diagnostic of the Acheulean, Sangoan, and Middle Stone Age, suggesting that the collections may document one or more temporal windows during the Chibanian age (770–126 ka). Whether artifacts in these samples were originally deposited sequentially or concurrently is not yet known and alternative hypotheses are presented and discussed. The collections are compared to sites in Zambia and the northern Lake Malawi basin and found to be similar technologically but typologically different. Given the paucity of previously known Ston Age archaeological sites in the region, our work now demonstrates that northern Luangwa has significant archaeological potential and deserves further study.

Between the sixth and fifteenth c. CE, a vast expanse of central and southern Sudan belonged to the kingdom of Alwa, ruled from the urban metropolis of Soba. Renewed investigation of the city unearthed a small cemetery in the northern part of the site. The heterogeneity of burial practices raised some questions as to the cultural and religious affinities of the deceased and suggested potential multiculturalism of the local urban population. We applied isotopic analyses to investigate the origins of the people buried at Cemetery OS and their concomitant ways of life. Non-concordance of ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr and δ¹⁸O values with local hydro-geological background speaks to the mixing of water sources as a result of residential mobility. The concordance of human and faunal strontium and oxygen results, combined with elevated δ¹³C values corresponding to almost exclusive reliance on C₄ produce, points to the possibility of seasonal movement of people with their herds between the Nile valley and the adjacent grasslands. Despite the turn of the medieval Nubian economy towards settled agriculture, by revealing the granular specificities of human adaptation in challenging ecosystems, our results produce the first insight into the enduring diversification of economic production, even in urbanized settings, and persisting participation of local peoples in agro-pastoral symbiosis.

Australopiths are a group of early human ancestors that lived approximately 4 to 2 million years ago and are considered a key transitional form between apes and humans. Studying australopiths can help to understand the evolutionary processes that led to the emergence of humans and gain insights into the unique adaptations and characteristics that set humans apart from other primates. A bibliometric-based review of publications on australopiths contained in the Scopus database was conducted, analyzing approximately 2000 of them. The main authors, institutions, and countries researching this subject were identified, as well as their future development. The connections between authors, countries, and research topics were also analyzed through the detection of communities. The more frequent keywords in this subject are hominid, animal, human, South Africa, and Australopithecus afarensis. Four main research clusters were identified in the field of australopiths: palaeobiology, cranial evolution, locomotion, and mandible evolution and morphometry. The most important countries in terms of collaboration networks are South Africa, the UK, France, and Germany. Research on australopiths is ongoing, and new research clusters are expected to emerge, such as those focused on pre-australopiths and the molecular evolution and taxonomy of australopiths. Overall, this work provides a comprehensive overview of the state of research on australopiths and offers insights into the current direction of the field.

The spread of pottery-producing communities into the Congo rainforest is commonly linked to demic diffusion, driven by the so-called “Bantu Expansion.” It is considered the primary linguistic, cultural, and demographic process in Holocene sub-Saharan Africa. A key region in the reconstruction of this process is the western Congo Basin. This paper presents, for the first time, a coherent picture of the archaeological settlement history in the western and northern Congo Basin, uncovered by fieldwork of the late 1980s along the rivers Ngoko, Sangha, Likwala-aux-Herbes, Ubangi, and Lua. Archaeological research of the River Reconnaissance Project, directed by Manfred K. H. Eggert from 1977 to 1987, produced a pottery sequence for the region. Archaeological features and findings uncovered during the project’s field campaigns in the northern and western Congo Basin have only recently been studied in detail. The present analysis provides the only reliable source for a reconstruction of the cultural dynamics within the region due to the lack of subsequent archaeological fieldwork. Archaeological data and the sequence of pottery styles within the western Congo Basin, along the Sangha river, cannot support the claim that this region, due to a climate-induced extension of savannas, played a unique role as a ‘‘corridor” within the expansion of putatively “Bantu” speaking groups during the latter half of the 1st millennium BCE.