The Early Later Stone Age in East Africa: Excavations and Lithic Assemblages from Lukenya Hill

The site of Lukenya Hill, Kenya, is one of the richest Later Stone Age (LSA) sites in East Africa. Its sequence documents the increasing manufacture of microlithic tools, one of the hallmarks of hunter–gatherer behavioral modernity (Bar-Yosef and Kuhn, 1999). This paper presents results of excavations at the LSA site of GvJm62, Lukenya Hill, and analysis of site formation processes on this inselberg rock shelter. It examines lithic assemblages from GvJm62 and four other Pleistocene-dated LSA sites at Lukenya Hill. Differences in raw material use, typology, and chronology indicate that there are three different kinds of LSA industries in the sampled sites at Lukenya Hill. Changes in technology, activities, and land use patterns can explain the differences among these three industries. The Lukenya Hill sequence is compared with other East African LSA industries.Le gisement de Lukenya Hill en Kenya est un des gisements les plus riches du type Paleolithique Superieure en Afrique de l'Est. La sequence demonstre l'éxistence et ensuite le fréquence des outils microlithiques. Cet article présent les résultats des fouilles du gisement de GvJm62 à Lukenya Hill et présent un étude des methodes de formation du gisement. On examine les outils lithiques de GvJm62 et quatre autres gisements à Lukenya Hill. Les differences des types des matières premiers, de la chronologie, et des types d'outils suggèrent qu'il y a trois types d'industrie à Lukenya Hill. On peut expliquer ces differences par changements en la technologie, les activités et les modèles de l'utilisation de la terre. La séquence à Lukenya Hill est comparée avec les autres industries Est Africain.     

Animal Disease Challenges to the Emergence of Pastoralism in Sub-Saharan Africa

Despite the antiquity of domestic cattle in the Sahara-Sahel, archaeological evidence from two sub-Saharan regions indicates that the first pastoralist colonization of sub-Saharan Africa may not have proceeded so smoothly as modern appearances suggest. The first appearance of cattle-based economies seems to have been delayed by as much as a thousand years after the first appearance of small stock, in both eastern and southern Africa. This article reviews the relevant archaeological evidence and argues that the lag in successful introduction of cattle stems from new animal diseases encountered by pastoral colonists entering biogeographic zones south of the Sahel. Diseases that are often fatal to cattle, including wildebeest-derived malignant catarrhal fever (WD-MCF), East Coast fever (ECF), foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), and Rift Valley fever (RVF), as well as trypanosomiasis, are described as probable barriers to the early entry of cattle-based economies into these regions.Malgré l'antiquité des animaux domestiques dans le Sahara-Sahel, les données archéologique de deux régions subsahariennes indiquent que les premières colonisations pastoraux des zones au sud du Sahel ne se propagèrent pas aussi promptement que suggèrent les apparences actuelles. En l'Afrique orientale et en l'Afrique du sud, l'apparition d'économies basées sur l'élevage des gros bovins paraît être retardée de quelque mille ans par rapport à l'apparition des petits ruminants domestiques dans ces mêmes régions. L'article recense les données archéologiques pertinentes et propose que le délai de l'introduction effective des gros bovins fût causée par des nouvelles maladies vétérinaires rencontrées par les premiers colonisateurs pastoraux entrant dans les zones biogéographiques au sud du Sahel. Des maladies fréquemment fatales aux gros bovins, telle que le coryza gangreneux, la thèleriose, la fièvre aphteuse, l'arbovirus des Bunyaviridae, aussi bien que la trypanosomiase, sont proposées comme des obstacles probables à la diffusion des économies à gros bovins dans ces régions.     

非洲与现代人的起源

德国慕尼黑和美国宾夕法尼亚两个实验室的科学研究小组,在没有研究一根尼安德特人骨头的情况下,可能一劳永逸地解决了尼人问题。这两个实验室的专家称,他们在1856年发现的尼人骨架上提取了尼人的...     

Coarse Earthenware at the Dutch Colonial Cape of Good Hope, South Africa: A History of Local Production and Typology of Products

Coarse earthenware production at the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Cape settlement began shortly after the Company established its mercantile entrepôt on the shores of Table Bay in 1652. Made by European Company potters, these vessels reproduced the forms of the homeland in the raw materials of the colony. A history of VOC pottery manufacture and a typological examination of the products illustrates how the global movements of mercantile capitalism combined with the local circumstances of the Cape settlement to create a material form reminiscent of Europe, but purely colonial in the dynamics of its production and use.     

Power and Patronage: A comparison of Tribal Service in Waziristan and South-West Arabia 1919–45

This article examines the concept of tribal service as applied by British administrators on the North-West Frontier of India and in South-West Arabia during the latter part of the colonial era. By examining a series of themes within the exercise of recruitment from among tribal society for the purposes of pacification, it seeks to illustrate not only the commonalities in approach between two distant political cadres, but also the inherent difficulties in applying administrative methods to complex and reactive tribal societies, and the unintended consequences that arose contrary to expectation.     

Beyond exploitation/empowerment: re-imagining Southern producers in commodity stories

One of the most dominant strands of research within cultural geography's ‘materialist turn’ is that of commodity stories. Through everything from phones to flowers, geographers have attempted to reveal the myriad connections between (Northern) consumers and (Southern) producers. Following commodities and tracing their networks, this research tends to privilege consumption as the primary site of social and cultural meaning within the global economy. Where producers are the focus, the theoretical framework for understanding their lives is typically a developmentalist one, foregrounding exploitation and/or empowerment. Thus, we learn little from commodity stories about the ordinary lives of Southern producers and the co-production of the sociocultural and the economic through their everyday practices. This paper argues that deeper sociocultural analysis of the processes of production is necessary to balance the current dominance of consumption-led commodity stories and, more importantly, to open up space for a re-imagining of Southern producers. Through the personal accounts of fourty beadwork producers in Cape Town, I explore how the everyday practices of craft production sustain existing social relations, generate new networks, and help to shape both a sense of belonging and a sense of self. This commodity story reveals Southern producers' lives to be both richer and more mundane than dominant constructions suggest.     

Strandloping as a Resource-Gathering Strategy in the Cape,South African Holocene Later Stone Age: The Verloren Vlei Record

ABSTRACT

Elands Bay and adjacent coastline near the mouth of the Verloren vlei on the South African Atlantic coast offered Later Stone Age foragers a variety of marine, estuarine, and terrestrial food resources. We suggest that strandloping (beachwalking or beachcombing) by latest Holocene foragers as a regular practice constituted an important component in their repertoire of subsistence activities. Washed-up mussels, seals, birds, whales, and other recently dead animals would have been available to such strandlopers. We distinguish strandloping as a subsistence practice from the procurement of living prey, including shellfish, mammals, birds, and other animals. The Holocene archaeological record of the Elands Bay area suggests changes through time in resource use, and these changes appear to be recognizable in patterns of shellfish gathering. During the latest part of the Holocene, between about 1,500 and 300 years ago, subsistence practices display a distinctive character that perhaps conforms more strongly than previously to what we conceive of as strandloping.     

1949～1964年中国外交部涉非地区司的三次调整

近年来,曾在外交部主管非洲事务的一些外交官相继发表回忆文章或出版回忆录,可是,这些亲历者对外交部涉非地区司的变迁及其不同名称的描述却出现与史实明显不符的情况。有的把1956年成立的西亚非洲司说成是非洲司,把1964年成立的非洲司说成是西     

Using historically informed archaeology: Seventeenth and eighteenth century Hueda/European interaction on the coast of Bénin

The period of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and European colonies is relatively well documented compared with the historic records of many regions of precolonial Africa. However, this documentation necessarily presents a perspective distilled through European eyes. This paper suggests a methodology influenced byAnnales history for critically analyzing documentary sources in conjunction with a critical interpretation of archaeological remains. Archaeological evidence from recent excavations at the site of Savi, capital of the Hueda kingdom, is contrasted with documentary evidence, facilitating an interpretation of motivations guiding Hueda interaction with European traders and structuring their spatial relationship.     

First molecular identification of a hafting adhesive in the Late Howiesons Poort at Diepkloof Rock Shelter (Western Cape,South Africa)

The hafting of tools using adhesive is one of the innovative features that characterizes the southern African Middle Stone Age. This technology has mainstream implications but remains insufficiently documented, largely due to unequal organic preservation and non-adapted analytical procedures. A notable exception is provided by the recent results from the site of Sibudu (Lombard, 2006; Wadley et al., 2009).