Data

This data corresponds to the article and shall be quoted as such using the provided DOI: Hensel, E. A., Bödeker, O., Bubenzer, O., and Vogelsang, R.: Combining geomorphological–hydrological analyses and the location of settlement and raw material sites – a case study on un-derstanding prehistoric human settlement activity in the southwestern Ethiopian Highlands, E&GQuaternary Sci. J., 68, 201–213, https://doi.org/10.5194/egqsj-68-201-2019, 2019.

Presentation at SAfA 2018 Conference in Toronto: The Dendi Lake Rock Shelter is situated circa 80 km west of Addis Abeba on the West Central Ethiopian Plateau in the Ginchi woreda of the Oromiya regional state of Ethiopia. In October 2012 a team from the University of Cologne, CRC 806 directed by R. Vogelsang excavated a test-trench that revealed four archaeological horizons that could clearly be distinguished in typological manners as well as by radiocarbon dates. The talk will focus on the lithics,...

The growing number of paleoenvironmental data, GIS-based analyses and modelling allows us to produce PaleoMaps for a given area. However, the „translation“ of paleoenvironmental information in maps is even more complex, than producing maps as an illustration of the present. The CRC 806 “Our Way to Europe” provides the background to study the culture-environment interaction and human mobility in the Late Quaternary. Northeastern Africa during the Last Interglacial is thereby an important region and timespan....

In prehistoric times the rock shelter Mochena Borago served as a retreat for anatomically modern humans in the southwestern Ethiopian Highlands. During the last decade archaeo-logical analyses helped to gain insight into the history of settlement of the rock shelter in the last 50 ka. Element and micromorphological analyses as well as computer-supported large scale investigations for sediment sources and transport into the rock shelter itself were carried out to understand the depositional history of...

Scale, spatial and temporal, is one of the most important issues to deal with, when reconstructing former environments and landscapes in context of geoarchaeology. We present remote sensing investigations of different scales in order to answer crucial questions about late Pleistocene terrain environment as one important aspect for the migration of anatomically modern humans in Northeast Africa.

Our research interests in palaeo-studies in East Africa remain high, partly because of the Out-of-Africa hypotheses predicting Homo sapiens origin to be situated in East Africa. Since several decades archaeologists and geoscientists explore suitable sites to answer related questions. Simultaneously, analytical methods applied to the archives improved in their sensibility or resolution over the given time. The amount of published scientific data is enormous, but has to be carefully checked on their...

The finely laminated sediment record of a permanent, hypersaline, desert oasis lake in the Ounianga region of northeastern Chad presents a unique opportunity to document the hydrological evolution of this groundwater-fed aquatic ecosystem during mid- and late-Holocene desiccation of the Sahara. In this study we reconstruct long-term changes in zoobenthos and zooplankton communities of Lake Yoa as their early-Holocene freshwater habitat changed into the hypersaline conditions prevailing today. Chironomid...

Lake Yoa (19.03°N, 20.31°E, 380 m a.s.l.) is a groundwater-fed lake in the hyperarid eastern Sahara halfway between the Tibesti Mountains and the Ennedi plateau. Kröpelin et al. (2008) revealed that the bottom sediments contain a unique archive of climatic and environmental change in the Earth´s major desert. The 7.5 m sediment record of OUNIK03/04 which covers 6,100 years has been extended to a maximum drill depth of 15.7 m during a 2010 coring campaign within the framework of the Collaborative...

The sedimentological and geochemical properties of a 7.47 m long laminated sequence from hypersaline Lake Yoa in northern Chad have been investigated, representing a unique, continuous 6100 year long continental record of climate and environmental change in the eastern Central Sahara. These data were used to reconstruct the Mid to Late Holocene history of this currently hyper-arid region, in order to address the question of whether the Mid Holocene environmental transition from a humid to a dry Sahara was...

The fresh and saline lakes of Ounianga Kebir and Serir in northeastern Chad are among the very few permanent aquatic ecosystems currently existing in the hyper-arid core of the Sahara desert. The confirmed modern fauna of aquatic molluscs at Ounianga comprises three widespread species (Melanoides tuberculata, Biomphalaria pfeifferi and Lymnaea natalensis), of which only the first appears to maintain a thriving population. We recovered seven more species of gastropods, among which one is new to science...

Desiccation of the Sahara since the middle Holocene has eradicated all but a few natural archives recording its transition from a “green Sahara” to the present hyperarid desert. Our continuous 6000-year paleoenvironmental reconstruction from northern Chad shows progressive drying of the regional terrestrial ecosystem in response to weakening insolation forcing of the African monsoon and abrupt hydrological change in the local aquatic ecosystem controlled by site-specific thresholds. Strong reductions...

East African paleoenvironments are highly variable, marked by extreme fluctuations in moisture availability, which has far-reaching implications for the origin, evolution and dispersal of Homo sapiens in and beyond the region. This paper presents results from a pilot core from the Chew Bahir basin in southern Ethiopia that records the climatic history of the past 45 ka, with emphasis on the African Humid Period (AHP, w15e5 ka calBP). Geochemical, physical and biological indicators show that Chew Bahir...