Data

Sites in North Africa hold key information for dating the presence ofHomo sapiens and the distribution of Middle Stone Age (MSA), Middle Palaeolithic (MP) and Later Stone Age (LSA) cultural activity in the Late Pleistocene. Here we present new and review recently published tephrochronological evidence for five cave sites in North Africa with long MSA/MP and LSA cultural sequences. Four tephra horizons have been identified at the Haua Fteah (Cyrenaica, Libya). They include cryptotephra evidence for the...

Die Ausbreitung des Menschen während der letzten 100.000 Jahre von Afrika nach Eurasien gilt heute als gesichert. Wissenschaftler diskutieren jedoch nach wie vor die verschiedenen möglichen Wege, die er dabei genommen haben könnte.

The third field season of the joint research project “Sodmein Cave”, conducted by the German University of Cologne and the Belgian University of Leuven, took place in spring 2012 between the 10th of March and the 15th of April. The field work was carried out under the aegis of the Collaborative Research Centre 806, which was established in 2009 by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Research Funding Organisation). During the first field campaign in 2010 the archaeological excavations in Sodmein Cave could...

Although Sodmein Cave was discovered about 30 years ago by M. Prickett (Prickett 1979), systematic research started during the 1990’s by the Belgian Middle Egypt Prehistoric Project (BMEPP) of the Leuven University (e.g. Moeyersons et al. 2002, Vermeersch 1994, Van Peer et al. 1996). With this archaeological field season in 2010 the research in Sodmein Cave was resumed as a joint project of the universities Leuven and Cologne. After the resolution of some administrative problems with regard to the military...

Thanks to new satellite data, it is possible to examine deserts area-wide for linear structures. Additionally, digital elevation models can be use to evaluate the geomorphological situation. In conjunction with historical sources and ground-truth data, these data allow us, for the first time, to reconstruct the position of the caravan routes with reasonable accuracy, here exemplified for the extremely arid Western Desert of Egypt. On the central Egyyptian Limestone Plateau where stony ground (hamada, serir)...

Perched groundwater resources on the northwestern coast of Egypt have thus far been little studied. However, if replenished by rainwater, they can provide a considerable amount of renewable water, i.e., for sustainable irrigation. These resources are limited, show different salinity contents and are endangered by overuse, pollution and by the sea level rising in the context of global warming. This paper presents new climatic data, geomorphologic, geologic, geochemical and hydrological researches in...

In vielen Trockengebieten der Erde haben der Klimawandel, ein überdurchschnittlich hoher Bevölkerungsdruck und eine zunehmende Ressourcen-, Nahrungsmittel- und Energienachfrage zu Landnutzungsänderungen, Migration, Ausweitung von Bewässerungsflächen oder zunehmender Verstädterung und damit einhergehenden Prozessen der Bodendegradation oder gar Desertifikation sowie zu physischem oder ökonomischem Wassermangel geführt. Während in prähistorischer Zeit das menschliche Handeln von den naturräumlichen...

The expansion of modern human populations in Africa 80,000 to 60,000 years ago and their initial exodus out of Africa have been tentatively linked to two phases of technological and behavioral innovation within the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa—the Still Bay and Howieson’s Poort industries—that are associated with early evidence for symbols and personal ornaments. Establishing the correct sequence of events, however, has been hampered by inadequate chronologies. We report ages for nine sites from...

This chapter is situated in the field among archaeology, geomorphology, and ecology. Two case studies from different east-Saharan landscape units classify and analyse archaeological, geoscientific, and remote-sensing data of Early and Mid-Holocene archaeological sites. The section combines the approaches of landscape ecology and landscape archaeology. The aim is a parameterisation of the research areas with respect to structural and ecological features. The data were used within a Geographical...

Terrestrial laser scanning was conducted to document and analyse sites of geoarchaeological interest in Jordan, Egypt and Spain. In those cases, the terrestrial laser scanner LMS-Z420i from Riegl was used in combination with an accurate RTK-GPS for georeferencing of the point clouds. Additionally, local surveying networks were integrated by established transformations and used for indirect registration purposes. All data were integrated in a workflow that involves different software and according results....

Between 70 and 50 ka BP, anatomically modern humans dispersed across and out of Africa to eventually populate all inhabitable continents. Knowledge of paleoenvironments and human behavioral patterns in Africa prior to and during these dispersals is crucial for understanding how and why hunter-gatherers were able to adapt rapidly to the new environments they encountered. However, few well-dated sites from this time period are known from the Horn of Africa, one of the purported staging areas for population...