Die Klingentechnologie von Mochena Borago / Äthiopien. Innovation vor 40 000 Jahren. Arbeit zur Erlangung des Master of Arts. Köln 2013

Abstract

The emergence of blade technology is often seen as an important indicator for the spread of modern humans from Africa to Eurasia and its evolution has been widely researched in Europe and the Middle East. However technological studies from the supposed original area of Homo sapiens, the Horn of Africa and especially Ethiopia, are still lacking, as well as a generally accepted lithic typology. Therefore a detailed comparative technological study of the late Middle Stone Age (40-45 ka) inventories of Mochena Borago rockshelter, Province Wolayta, Southwest Ethiopia, was conducted, which showed unexpected internal variability. In comparison to the older inventories from Mochena Borago, the youngest (~41 ka) proved to show already all necessary technological traits required for a formal blade production, but neither were they so consequently used, as it is known from European Upper Palaeolithic inventories, nor does the amount of blade production point to a specific importance of this technology. In comparison to other MSA sites in the Horn of Africa, all inventories from Mochena Borago prove to be of exceptionally small size and fall within the size range of the European Mesolithic. This cannot easily be explained, since a very rich raw material source is only 20 km away. The combination of this very small sized inventory with the emergence of blade production and also backed blades in Mochena Borago can provide further insight concerning the mechanisms and environmental factors which might have initiated the dispersal from Africa during the second half of MIS 3.

• blade technology
• mochena borago
• msa

Resources

• Parow-Souchon_Die Klingentechnologie von Mochena Borago Äthiopien.pdf

Bibliography

Parow-Souchon (2013): Die Klingentechnologie von Mochena Borago / Äthiopien. Innovation vor 40 000 Jahren. Arbeit zur Erlangung des Master of Arts.