Carmel Schrire

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Carmel Schrire
Born (1941-05-15) 15 May 1941 (age 83)
Cape Town, South Africa
Alma mater University of Cape Town, University of Cambridge, Australian National University
Scientific career
Fields Anthropology
Institutions Rutgers University

Carmel Schrire (born 15 May 1941) [1] is a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University whose research focuses on historical archaeology, particularly in South Africa and Europe.

Contents

Education and research

Schrire was born in Cape Town, South Africa and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town (BA, 1960), going on to attend the University of Cambridge (BA (Hons.), MA, 1965). Her early research interests were in prehistoric archaeology, and she did her doctoral research in Australia's Northern Territory on the way in which modern Aboriginal behaviour can help interpret prehistoric remains. She received her PhD in 1968 from the Australian National University. [2]

In 1984 she initiated a program in the historical archaeology of European contact and settlement at the Cape region in South Africa. [3] [4] Her 1995 book Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist explores the dehumanizing effects of colonialism and racism on both colonized and colonizer. [5] In 2004, she excavated the house of the "Last Jew of Auschwitz" in Oświęcim, Poland.

Publications

Journals

Books

Related Research Articles

Landscape archaeology, previously known as total archaeology is a sub-discipline of archaeology and archaeological theory. It studies the ways in which people in the past constructed and used the environment around them. It is also known as archaeogeography. Landscape archaeology is inherently multidisciplinary in its approach to the study of culture, and is used by pre-historical, classic, and historic archaeologists. The key feature that distinguishes landscape archaeology from other archaeological approaches to sites is that there is an explicit emphasis on the sites' relationships between material culture, human alteration of land/cultural modifications to landscape, and the natural environment. The study of landscape archaeology has evolved to include how landscapes were used to create and reinforce social inequality and to announce one's social status to the community at large. The field includes with the dynamics of geohistorical objects, such as roads, walls, boundaries, trees, and land divisions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilton culture</span> Archaeological culture from Africa

Wilton is a term archaeologists use to generalize archaeological sites and cultures that share similar stone and non-stone technology dating from 8,000-4,000 years ago. Archaeologists often refer to Wilton as a technocomplex, or Industry. Technological industries are defined by a common tradition of stone tool assemblages, but these technological industries extend to common cultural behaviors. As such, archaeologists use these industries to define a discrete cultural taxonomy. However, technological industries have the potential to generalize different cultures and communities at regional scales that, in more local settings, are distinguishable in both technology and cultural behaviors.

Ivor Noël Hume, OBE was a British-born archaeologist who did research in the United States. A former director of Colonial Williamsburg’s archaeological research program and the author of more than 20 books, he was heralded by his peers as the "father of historical archaeology".

Dirk Jansz Smient was governor of Mauritius in the new settlement at Grand Port from 1666 to 1669, when he returned to Cape of Good Hope. He was replaced by George Frederik Wreede. In November 1676 he led a punitive expedition from Cape Town to a group of Hottentots led by Chief Goenema, which failed as they could not be located.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Friedrich Wreede</span> Dutch governor of Mauritius

Georg Friedrich Wreede or Georgius Fredericius Wreede was governor of Dutch Mauritius from 1665 to 1672, with a break between 1668-1669.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willem Adriaan van der Stel</span>

Willem Adriaan van der Stel was an Extraordinary Councillor of the Dutch East Indies, and Governor of the Cape Colony, a way station for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), from 23 January 1699 to 1707. He was dismissed after a revolt and was exiled to the Netherlands.

Hilary John Deacon was a South African archaeologist and academic. He was professor of archaeology at the University of Stellenbosch in Stellenbosch, South Africa. His research focused on the emergence of modern humans and African archaeology. He was principal researcher at the Klasies River Caves, one of the oldest known sites of anatomically modern humans, who lived there circa 125,000 years ago.

Janette Deacon is a South African archaeologist specialising in heritage management and rock art conservation. She has studied the changes in stone tools from sites in the southern Cape in relation to climate change over the past 20,000 years. From 1985, she located rock engravings at places where the /Xam informants of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd lived in the nineteenth century. She served as a member of the SAHRA Council and was first chairperson of Heritage Western Cape.

Wonderwerk Cave is an archaeological site, formed originally as an ancient solution cavity in dolomite rocks of the Kuruman Hills, situated between Danielskuil and Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. It is a National Heritage Site, managed as a satellite of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley. Geologically, hillside erosion exposed the northern end of the cavity, which extends horizontally for about 140 m (460 ft) into the base of a hill. Accumulated deposits inside the cave, up to 7 m (23 ft) in-depth, reflect natural sedimentation processes such as water and wind deposition as well as the activities of animals, birds, and human ancestors over some 2 million years. The site has been studied and excavated by archaeologists since the 1940s and research here generates important insights into human history in the subcontinent of Southern Africa. Evidence within Wonderwerk cave has been called the oldest controlled fire. Wonderwerk means "miracle" in the Afrikaans language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Border Cave</span> Rock shelter in South Africa

Border Cave is an archaeological site located in the western Lebombo Mountains in Kwazulu-Natal. The rock shelter has one of the longest archaeological records in southern Africa, which spans from the Middle Stone Age to the Iron Age.

The South African Archaeological Society was founded in 1945 to promote public awareness of archaeology and its findings in southern Africa, facilitating interaction between professional archaeologists and people with a lay interest in the subject. The society, through its branches, organizes regular lectures and excursions, and, since its inception, has been responsible for publications including a professional journal and a range of newsletters of a more popular nature at national and branch levels. Informally the society is known as "ArchSoc".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nelson Bay Cave</span> Stone Age archaeological site in South Africa

Nelson Bay Cave, previously known as Wagenaar’s Cave, is a coastal archaeological site in the Robberg Nature Reserve on the Robberg Peninsula in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, about 250 km east of Cape Town. The cave is 18 meters wide and 35 meters deep, and the cave opening is 21 meters above mean sea level. The cave was amongst the first sites excavated in the southern Cape aimed at recording changes in terrestrial fauna caused by changes in climate and sea levels. It documents environmental changes during glacial and interglacial periods. Additionally, the cave is recognized for its Stone Age artifacts that show the transition from Middle Stone Age (MSA) to Later Stone Age (LSA) technologies. It has been regarded as a type-site of the Robberg Later Stone Age Industry.

Karim Sadr is an archaeologist contributing to research in southern Africa. He is the author of over 60 academic articles, a book and two edited volumes. While Sadr has contributed to the Kalahari Debate, his more recent work has focused on historical revision, re-examining the acquisition of domesticated animals and pottery in southern Africa by Hunter-gatherer. His work is reintroducing the term Neolithic back into southern African archaeological discourse from which it had previously been removed.

Lyn Wadley is an honorary professor of archaeology, and also affiliated jointly with the Archaeology Department and the Institute for Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Judith Sealy is a Professor and South Africa Research Chairs Initiative Research Chair in Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies and director of the Stable Light Isotope Lab in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town.

Patricia Joan Vinnicombe was a South African archaeologist and artist, known for identifying and copying San rock paintings in the valleys and foothills of the Drakensberg. Her work transformed the study of rock art into a science. She was also active in the preservation of Aboriginal art in Western Australia.

Elands Bay Cave is located near the mouth of the Verlorenvlei estuary on the Atlantic coast of South Africa's Western Cape Province. The climate has continuously become drier since the habitation of hunter-gatherers in the Later Pleistocene. The archaeological remains recovered from previous excavations at Elands Bay Cave have been studied to help answer questions regarding the relationship of people and their landscape, the role of climate change that could have determined or influenced subsistence changes, and the impact of pastoralism and agriculture on hunter-gatherer communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boomplaas Cave</span> Archaeological site in South Africa

Boomplaas Cave is located in the Cango Valley in the foothills of the Swartberg mountain range, north of Oudtshoorn, Eden District Municipality in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. It has a 5 m (16 ft) deep stratified archaeological sequence that spans the past 60,000 to 80,000 years, representing discontinuous occupations and hunter-gatherer/herder acculturation. The cave has served multiple functions during its occupation, such as a kraal (enclosure) for animals, a place for the storage of oil rich fruits, and as a home-base for hunter-gatherers. The site's documentation contributed to the reconstruction of palaeo-environments in the context of changes in climate within periods of the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. Faunal remains and plant material have also been used to reconstruct the diets of the sites occupants. Stone Age adzes have been found at the site, along with lithics from the Wilton, Albany, Robberg, Howiesons Poort industries. Other notable finds include painted marker stones and pottery.

The Bom Jesus was a Portuguese nau and Indiaman that set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on Friday, March 7, 1533. Its fate was unknown until 2008, when its remains were discovered during diamond mining operations on the coast of Namibia, near Oranjemund. Today, the Bom Jesus is the oldest known and most valuable shipwreck ever discovered off the Western coast of Sub-Saharan Africa.

References

  1. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Reports of the President and the Treasurer (John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1989), p. 83.
  2. Rutgers biographical sketch Archived 2005-03-12 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Schrire, Carmel. Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995. ISBN   0-8139-1558-9.
  4. Schrire, Carmel. Tigers in Africa: Stalking the Past at the Cape of Good Hope. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002. ISBN   0-8139-2129-5.
  5. Review of Digging through Darkness Archived 2005-10-24 at the Wayback Machine by Kris Hirst