Isis Mesfin

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle · Department of Prehistory

Leopard Cave, Erongo Mountains, Namibia, delivered an important quantity of macrotools, mainly in local basalt, through a Later Stone Age sequence spanning mainly the Later Holocene. These tools, usually labelled ‘crude’ or ‘archaic’, raise questions on the specialised technical activities which occurred at the site. Through a technological methodo...

ABSTRACT---- In the Congo Basin, a regional industry attributed to the Middle Stone Age, the Lupemban, has been empirically considered as a technological adaptation to African tropical rainforests. The “forest industry” hypothesis is based on the presence of diverse heavy-duty tools and their location on the valley bottoms of the Congo Basin. Nowad...

ENG -- In recent years, we have undertaken a technological reappraisal (productional and techno-functional analysis) of several lithic collections attributed to the Acheulean on a typological basis during the 20th century and located on the Atlantic coast of sub-Saharan Africa. This article presents a summary of the work carried out, in progress an...

Matupi Cave, located in the Ituri rainforest, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has been long considered an early example of Later Stone Age quartz microlithism in equatorial Africa from >40,700 BP. We reassessed the lithic collection of Matupi to provide a new description of specific technical behaviors, namely, the use of quartz crystals...

The relationship between Earlier Stone Age (ESA) hominins and the southern African coastal environment has been poorly investigated, despite the high concentration of open-air sites in marine and fluvial terraces of the coastal plain from c. 1Ma onward during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Southern Africa provides some of the earliest evidence of...

LESEDI Carnets de terrain #25 https://issuu.com/french-institute/docs/2022-lesedi25

The site of Nyabusosi 18 (NY18), Uganda, is among the westernmost Early Pleistocene archaeological occurrences in the Rift Valley. The site is dated by tephrochronology to c. 1.5 Ma and was initially attributed to the Oldowan techno-complex. The lithic assemblage is mainly composed of small flakes and cores with very few retouched pieces and vein q...

Mining operations in Africa have played a considerable role in the reconstruction of human evolution. These contributions could not have been possible without cooperation between the mining industry, archaeology and palaeontology. However, closer scrutiny of their initially fortuitous relationship reveals limitations and fundamental differences in...

Between 2012 and 2019, the surveys conducted by the French archaeological mission of the Soulaimanih Governorate in the Rania and Peshadar plains of Iraqi Kurdistan, previously devoid of Paleolithic records, have yielded numerous lithic assemblages from open-air sites, caves and rock-shelters. We present here six lithic assemblages from the three d...

Cultura - Jornal Angolano de Arte & Letras

Discovered in 1988 by R. Oslisly and B. Peyrot, Elarmékora is a high terrace that, today, is situated 175 m above the Ogooué River in the historical complex of Elarmékora, attached to the Lopé National Park in Gabon, a World Heritage site since 2007. The site yielded a small lithic assemblage, including mainly cobble artefacts embedded within the 1...

Although the data are incomplete, the Acheulean seems to occupy the longest share of the prehistoric period of West Africa. Whereas some sites suggest the arrival of the first hominids beginning in the Early Pleistocene, the majority of the Acheulean sites show evidence of activity throughout almost the entirety of the Mid-Pleistocene. From the Sah...

Along the southern African coastal plain, human occupation is documented since the end of the Early Pleistocene. The archaeological, palaeoenvironemental and ethnographic records suggest that in these arid to semi-arid landscapes where inland resources are sometimes scarce, coastal zones were attractive to past human populations. Among the intertid...

Cultura - Jornal Angolano de Artes e Letras

Le site acheuléen des paléo-plages de Mormolo a été découvert en 1979 par l’équipe du Museu Nacional de Arqueologia de Benguela dirigée par L.J. Pais Pinto (Pinto, 1988). Il a fait l’objet de ramassages de surface lors de diverses prospections sur cinq localités différentes d’une plage soulevée de 100m d’altitude et d’environ 17 000m2 incisée par l...

In Central Africa, Late Stone Age (LSA) seems to emerge before the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM) usually associated to a fluctuating savanna expansion and forest cover reduction. However, few sites with a reliable chrono-stratigraphic context allow us to deal with the emergence, the diffusion and the specificities of the regional lithic assemblages as...

In southern Africa, the use of gravel outcrops has been recorded at a range of Earlier Stone Age sites, and this raises questions about the diversity of raw material sourcing practices adopted by hominins. To assess the existence of sourcing strategies, this study details a new morphometric analysis method that investigates the influence of pebble...

Résumé En Namibie, malgré une riche documentation sur le Middle et Later Stone Age, les sites Earlier Stone Age sont principalement connus en surface du fait d’important processus d’érosion. Dans ce contexte, les comportements humains et les réponses aux environnements namibiens au cours du Pléistocène moyen restent obscurs. À la fin des années 197...

---ABSTRACT--- A large part of Africa recently revealed important Middle Stone Age remains arguing for the emergence and spread of Homo sapiens on the African continent as early as the Middle Pleistocene. However, our knowledge of the role of the Congo Basin in continental and regional population dynamics remains misunderstood. The poor preservatio...

Despite its strategic location within the continent, Central Africa is rarely integrated into the reconstruction of population dynamics during the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of Africa, especially in terms of the emergence, diffusion and behavioural patterns of Homo sapiens. However, hundreds of sites have been discovered in Central Africa during the 20...