The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropological localities in the world; the many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches across East Africa, it is about 48 km long, and is located in the eastern Serengeti Plains within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in the Olbalbal ward located in Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region, about 45 kilometres from Laetoli, another important archaeological locality of early human occupation. The British/Kenyan paleoanthropologist-archeologist team of Mary and Louis Leakey established excavation and research programs at Olduvai Gorge that achieved great advances in human knowledge and are world-renowned. The site is registered as one of the National Historic Sites of Tanzania.
Hoabinhian is a lithic techno-complex of archaeological sites associated with assemblages in Southeast Asia from late Pleistocene to Holocene, dated to c. 10,000–2000 BCE. It is attributed to hunter-gatherer societies of the region and their technological variability over time is poorly understood. In 2016 a rockshelter was identified in Yunnan (China), where artifacts belonging to the Hoabinhian technocomplex were recognized. These artifacts date from 41,500 BCE.
The Kapthurin Formation is a series of Middle Pleistocene sediments associated with the East African Rift Valley. Part of the East African Rift System, it is also an important archaeological site in the study of early humans who occupied the area and left stone tools and animal bones behind. It outcrops in Kenya west of Lake Bogoria and northwest of Lake Baringo in the Kenya Rift Valley, exposed on the surface in a 150 km2 (58 sq mi) area. It also outcrops in portions of the Tugen Hills farther east. The ~125 metres (410 ft) of sediment that comprises the Kapthurin formation represents more than 600,000 years of depositional history. Clastic sediments, tuffs, and carbonate beds, in the Kapthurin give information on past river and lake environments. Additionally, intercalated tuffs and extrusive igneous rocks associated with Rift Valley volcanic activity have allowed for multiple argon–argon dating studies. The high resolution dating enables archaeological studies regarding changing hominin behavior. The Kapthurin Formation has been used to study the Acheulian-Middle Stone Age transition.
Spirit Cave is an archaeological site in Pang Mapha district, Mae Hong Son Province, northwestern Thailand. It was occupied 12,000 to 7,000 uncalibrated radiocarbon years ago by prehistoric humans of the Hoabinhian culture.
The Kondoa Rock-Art Sites or Kondoa Irangi Rock Paintings are a series of ancient paintings on rockshelter walls in central Tanzania. The Kondoa region was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006 because of its impressive collection of rock art. These sites were named national monuments in 1937 by the Tanzania Antiquities Department. The paintings are located approximately nine kilometres east of the main highway (T5) from Dodoma to Babati, about 20 km north of Kondoa town, in Kondoa District of Dodoma Region, Tanzania. The boundaries of the site are marked by concrete posts. The site is a registered National Historic Sites of Tanzania.
The Later Stone Age (LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age.
Mumba Cave, located near the highly alkaline Lake Eyasi in Karatu District, Arusha Region, Tanzania. The cave is a rich archaeological site noted for deposits spanning the transition between the Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age in Eastern Africa. The transitional nature of the site has been attributed to the large presence of its large assemblage of ostrich eggshell beads and more importantly, the abundance of microlith technology. Because these type artifacts were found within the site it has led archaeologists to believe that the site could provide insight into the origins of modern human behavior. The cave was originally tested by Ludwig Kohl-Larsen and his wife Margit in their 1934 to 1936 expedition. They found abundant artifacts, rock art, and burials. However, only brief descriptions of these findings were ever published. That being said, work of the Kohl-Larsens has been seen as very accomplished due to their attention to detail, especially when one considers that neither was versed in proper archaeological techniques at the time of excavation. The site has since been reexamined in an effort to reanalyze and complement the work that has already been done, but the ramifications of improper excavations of the past are still being felt today, specifically in the unreliable collection of C-14 data and confusing stratigraphy.
The archaeological site of Shum Laka is the most prominent rockshelter site in the Grasslands region of the Laka Valley, northwest Cameroon. Occupations at this rockshelter date to the Later Stone Age. This region is important to investigations of the development and subsequent diffusion of Bantu-speaking peoples. The site of Shum Laka is located approximately 15 kilometers from the town of Bamenda, and it resides on the inner wall of the Bafochu Mbu caldera. The deposits at Shum Laka include each phase of cultural development in the Grasslands.
Howiesons Poort is a technological and cultural period characterized by material evidence with shared design features found in South Africa, Lesotho, and Namibia. It was named after the Howieson's Poort Shelter archaeological site near Grahamstown in South Africa, where the first assemblage of these tools was discovered. Howiesons Poort is believed, based on chronological comparisons between many sites, to have started around 64.8 thousand years ago and ended around 59.5 thousand years ago. It is considered to be a technocomplex, or a cultural period in archaeology classified by distinct and specific technological materials. Howiesons Poort is notable for its relatively complex tools, technological innovations, and cultural objects evidencing symbolic expression. One site in particular, Sibudu Cave, provides one of the key reference sequences for Howiesons Poort. Howiesons Poort assemblages are primarily found at sites south of the Limpopo River.
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.
Buur Heybe, which translates to "The Hill of the Potter's Sand", is a late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological complex located in the largest granite inselberg in the inter-riverine region of the southern Bay province of Somalia approximately 180 km northwest of the capital Mogadishu. Buur Heybe has a longstanding history of archaeological research dating back to the 1930s when Paolo Graziosi carried out the first professional archaeological excavation in Somalia in the rockshelter site of Gogoshiis Qabe in Buur Heybe. Further excavations by J. Desmond Clark in the 1950s and later by the Buur Ecological and Archaeological Project (BEAP) led by Steven Brandt in the 1980s have made Buur Heybe one of the best dated and closely studied archaeological sites in Somalia.
The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic is a collection of ancient societies that appeared in the Rift Valley of East Africa and surrounding areas during a time period known as the Pastoral Neolithic. They were South Cushitic speaking pastoralists who tended to bury their dead in cairns, whilst their toolkit was characterized by stone bowls, pestles, grindstones and earthenware pots.
The Pastoral Neolithic refers to a period in Africa's prehistory, specifically Tanzania and Kenya, marking the beginning of food production, livestock domestication, and pottery use in the region following the Later Stone Age. The exact dates of this time period remain inexact, but early Pastoral Neolithic sites support the beginning of herding by 5000 BP. In contrast to the Neolithic in other parts of the world, which saw the development of farming societies, the first form of African food production was nomadic pastoralism, or ways of life centered on the herding and management of livestock. The shift from hunting to food production relied on livestock that had been domesticated outside of East Africa, especially North Africa. This period marks the emergence of the forms of pastoralism that are still present. The reliance on livestock herding marks the deviation from hunting-gathering but precedes major agricultural development. The exact movement tendencies of Neolithic pastoralists are not completely understood.
Agness Gidna is a Tanzanian paleontologist and a former Senior Curator of Paleontology at the National Museum of Tanzania. She is currently working with Ngorongoro Conservation Area as a Principal Cultural Heritage Officer. She is the first Tanzanian woman to hold a doctorate in Physical Anthropology and she is the first Tanzanian female research director at Olduvai Gorge, where she has been a co-principal investigator of the Olduvai Palaeoanthropology and Paleoecology Project (TOPPP) since 2017.
Panga ya Saidi is an archaeological cave site located in Kilifi County, southeastern Kenya, about 15 km from the Indian Ocean in the Dzitsoni limestone hills. The cave site has rich archaeological deposits dating to the Middle Stone Age, Later Stone Age, and Iron Age. Excavated deposits preserve an unusually long record of human activities, from around 78,000 years ago until around 400 years ago, a chronology supported by radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence dating. This sequence puts Panga ya Saidi alongside other key sites such as Enkapune ya Muto, Mumba Rockshelter, and Nasera Rockshelter that are important for understanding the Late Pleistocene and the Middle to Later Stone Age transition in eastern Africa.
The Mlambalasi Rock Shelter is a historic site located in Iringa District of Iringa Region in southern Tanzania, 50 km away from Iringa City. Excavations in 2006 and 2010 by the Iringa Region Archaeological Project uncovered artifactual deposits from the Later Stone Age (LSA), the Iron Age, and the historic periods, as well as external artifacts from the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Direct dating on Achatina shell and ostrich eggshell beads indicates that the oldest human burials at Mlambalasi are from the terminal Pleistocene. Mlambalasi is characterized by interment LSA and Iron Age periods, as well as by cycles of use and abandonment.
Mochena Borago is a rockshelter and archaeological site situated on the western slope of Mount Damota, nearest to the town of Wolaita Sodo in Ethiopia, located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region. The site is well-dated, with 59 radiocarbon dates, which gives it one of the most secure chronologies among Late Pleistocene sites in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa. It is one of only a few African sites found with intact deposits dating to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 outside of South Africa, and was potentially a refugium for hunter-gatherering peoples during the cold and arid period of MIS 4. This makes it an important research site for testing the "refugium theory," which states that over the past 70,000 years, during cold, arid conditions, like those of the Last Glacial Maximum and MIS 4, humans sought refuge in the mountains of the southwest Ethiopian Highlands, which received higher rainfall, making them more habitable than the surrounding areas. Research at Mochena Borago is helping to reconstruct human behavior during the Late Pleistocene, and the paleoenvironment that Homosapiens would have inhabited at this time in the Horn of Africa.
Nyabusora is an archaeological site dated to the Stone Age. The site is located in Kagera Region of Tanzania.
Cooper's Ferry is an archaeological site along the lower Salmon River near the confluence with Rock Creek in the western part of the US state of Idaho, and part of the Lower Salmon River Archeological District. It is 17 kilometres (11 mi) south of the town of Cottonwood and 63 kilometres (39 mi) upstream from the Snake River. Various lithic and animal remains from the Pleistocene to early Holocene ages have been found there. The site is on traditional Nez Perce land, and known to the tribe as the historical village of Nipéhe.
Ostrich eggshell beads, considered among the earliest ornaments created by Homo sapiens, represent some of the most ancient fully manufactured beads. Archaeologists have traced their origins back to the Late Pleistocene, with evidence suggesting they were crafted as early as 75,000 years ago in Africa. Certain populations continue to produce and utilize these beads in contemporary times.
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