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Kalemba Rockshelter
The Kalemba Rockshelter is an archaeology site located in eastern Zambia, at coordinates 14°7 S and 32°3 E. Local tradition recalls the use of the rock shelter as a refuge during the time of Ngoni raiding in the 19th century. The site is known for various rock paintings as well as advanced microlithic use. History of research The Kalemba rockshelter is an archaeological site located in eastern Zambia, discovered in 1955 by R. A. Hamilton and then reported to the former Rhodes-Livingstone Museum. But it wasn't until 1971 that the site was excavated by D.W. Phillipson. Over 30 meters in height, the rock shelter is formed by an outcrop of granite gneiss. Facing the Chipwete valley, on the north-west side the rockshelter has a height of 4.5 meters, maximum, and extends through an open area for protection. The flat surface is located near the north-east side of the rockshelter; closed off on all sides, it has a steep rocky headland on the main hillside. The north and south-west of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zambia
Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the northeast, Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the southeast, Zimbabwe and Botswana to the south, Namibia to the southwest, and Angola to the west. The capital city of Zambia is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of Zambia. The nation's population of around 19.5 million is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the north, the core economic hubs of the country. Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the thirteenth century. Following the arrival of European exploration of Africa, European explorers in the eighteenth century, the British colonised the r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ngoni People
The Ngoni people are an ethnic group living in the present-day Southern African countries of Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. The Ngoni trace their origins to the Nguni and Zulu people of kwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The displacement of the Ngoni people in the great scattering following the Zulu wars had repercussions in social reorganization as far north as Malawi and Zambia. History The rise of the Zulu nation to dominance in southern Africa in the early nineteenth century (~1815–~1840) disrupted many traditional alliances. Around 1817, the Mthethwa alliance, which included the Zulu clan, came into conflict with the Ndwandwe alliance, which included the Nguni people from what is now kwaZulu-Natal. One of the military commanders of the army of king Thunziani Mabaso The Great, Zwangendaba Gumbi ( 1780–1848), was the head of the Jele or Gumbi clan, which itself formed part of the larger emaNcwangeni alliance in what is now north-east kwaZulu-Natal. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microlith
A microlith is a small Rock (geology), stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The microliths were used in spear points and arrowheads. Microliths are produced from either a small blade (Microblade technology, microblade) or a larger blade-like piece of flint by abrupt or truncated retouch (lithics), retouching, which leaves a very typical piece of waste, called a microburin. The microliths themselves are sufficiently worked so as to be distinguishable from workshop waste or accidents. Two families of microliths are usually defined: laminar and geometric. An assemblage of microliths can be used to date an archeological site. Laminar microliths are slightly larger, and are associated with the end of the Upper Paleolithic and the beginning of the Epipaleolithic era; geometric microliths are characteristic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Livingstone Museum
The Livingstone Museum, formerly the David Livingstone Memorial Museum and after that, the Rhodes-Livingstone Museum, is the largest and the oldest museum in Zambia, located in Livingstone near Victoria Falls. The museum has exhibits of artifacts related to local history and prehistory, including photographs and musical instruments, and also holds possessions and memorabilia - including letters and journals - of David Livingstone, the explorer and missionary. History The Livingstone Museum is the largest and the oldest museum in Zambia, established in 1934 as the David Livingstone Memorial Museum. In 1948, Captain A.W. Whittington offered to sell the two specimens of a fossilized human femur (" Rhodesian man") to the Rhodes-Livingstone Museum, but the museum could not afford to make the purchase. A new Spanish colonial-style building was opened in 1951. Jock Millar, former mayor of Livingstone, requested that Harry Susman donate a 'four-faced' tower clock to the museum, but befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Phillipson
David Walter Phillipson FBA FSA (born 17 October 1942) is a British archaeologist specializing in African archaeology. His most notable work has been in Ethiopia, particularly on the archaeology of Aksumite sites. He was curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge from 1981–2006, and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of th ..., 1988–2006. Selected publications * ''African Archaeology'' * ''Foundations of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the northern Horn, 1000 BC - AD 1300'' * ''Ancient Churches of Ethiopia''. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009. References * ‘PHILLIPSON, Prof. David Walter’, Who's Who 2013, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2013; online edn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gneiss
Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures and pressures than schist. Gneiss nearly always shows a banded texture characterized by alternating darker and lighter colored bands and without a distinct cleavage. Gneisses are common in the ancient crust of continental shields. Some of the oldest rocks on Earth are gneisses, such as the Acasta Gneiss. Description Orthogneiss from the Czech Republic In traditional English and North American usage, a gneiss is a coarse-grained metamorphic rock showing compositional banding (gneissic banding) but poorly developed schistosity and indistinct cleavage. In other words, it is a metamorphic rock composed of mineral grains easily seen with the unaided eye, which form obvious compositional layers, but which has only a weak tendency to fracture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Excavation (archaeology)
In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be conducted over a few weeks to several years. Excavation involves the recovery of several types of data from a site. This data includes artifacts (portable objects made or modified by humans), features (non-portable modifications to the site itself such as post molds, burials, and hearths), ecofacts (evidence of human activity through organic remains such as animal bones, pollen, or charcoal), and archaeological context (relationships among the other types of data).Kelly&Thomas (2011). ''Archaeology: down to earth'' (4th ed.). Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Before excavating, the presence or absence of archaeological remains can often be suggested by, non-intrusive remote sensing, such as ground-penetrating radar. Basic informat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radiocarbon Dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon () is constantly being created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of it contains begins to decrease as the undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the amount of in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunate
Lunate is a crescent or moon-shaped microlith. In the specialized terminology of lithic reduction, a lunate flake is a small, crescent-shaped flake removed from a stone tool during the process of pressure flaking. In the Natufian period, a lunate was a small crescent-shaped stone tool that was sometimes used to harvest grasses. In archaeology a lunate is a small stone artifact, that has a sharpened straight edge and a blunt crescent shaped back. The word originates from the Latin word lunatus which means to bend like a crescent, and from luna meaning moon in Latin. A lunate object can be typically used as a decorative piece or as a stone tool. Israeli lunate In the earlier findings of Epipaleolithic lunate in the Natufian, Harifian, and Negev Kebaran periods in Israel they were roughly 10–40 mm long and were formed on small blades or bladelets. While the later findings Natufian and Harifian range of lengths varied then from 9–17 mm. In the later period the luna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical formula of SiO2. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earth's continental crust, behind feldspar. Quartz exists in two forms, the normal α-quartz and the high-temperature β-quartz, both of which are chiral. The transformation from α-quartz to β-quartz takes place abruptly at . Since the transformation is accompanied by a significant change in volume, it can easily induce microfracturing of ceramics or rocks passing through this temperature threshold. There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are classified as gemstones. Since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings, especially in Eurasia. Quartz is the mineral defining the val ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chert
Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a precipitation (chemistry), chemical precipitate or a diagenesis, diagenetic replacement, as in petrified wood. Chert is typically composed of the petrified remains of siliceous ooze, the biogenic sediment that covers large areas of the deep ocean floor, and which contains the silicon skeletal remains of diatoms, Dictyochales, silicoflagellates, and radiolarians. Precambrian cherts are notable for the presence of fossil cyanobacteria. In addition to Micropaleontology, microfossils, chert occasionally contains macrofossils. However, some chert is devoid of any fossils. Chert varies greatly in color (from white to black), but most often manifests as gray, brown, grayish brown and light green to rusty redW.L. Roberts, T.J. Campbell, G.R. Rapp Jr. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mumbwa Caves
The Mumbwa Caves are an archeological site in Zambia. The site has yielded artifacts that date from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and the Iron Age. The caves are a source of stratified, in situ deposits with faunal and human remains. Mumbwa, with its interior structures, demonstrates the complexity of the behavioral abilities of the people from the Mesolithic. Selection of raw materials along with features such as hearths suggests a population which was modern in its behaviors used to inhabit the Mumbwa Caves. Study and excavation of the Mumbwa Caves is helping to fill in the gaps in the late Pleistocene prehistory of south central Africa. Excavations Macrae 1926; Clark 1942; Savage 1983. In 1931, Dart and Del Grande excavated the caves and discovered intact basal deposits which were used to date the site. In 1993, Lawrence Barham gathered a team represented by the Zambian National Heritage Conservation Commission, the Livingstone Museum and the Universities of Bristol and Oxfo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
