Projekt

The focus of this project is to understand patterns of subsistence, technology, and human adaptation, and to provide reliable age estimates of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) cultures in southern and northern Tanzania. These regions offer a unique cognitive development in human history. It is possible that northern and southern Tanzania provided a refuge for people to stay during the Middle to Later Pleistocene when most of tropical Africa was affected by a series of dry and arid episodes. Deep, stratified archaeological deposits at the rock-shelters of Mumba in northern Tanzania and Magubike in southern Tanzania show that people remained there for long periods. Despite the fact that these sites are located in varied environments i.e., dry grassland at Mumba and open woodland at Magubike, it is likely that the landscape that surrounds both sites never experienced the worst dry and arid conditions during the glacial and interglacial periods. This is because of the interactions of several ocean-atmospheric and terrestrial ecosystems, which influence macro-environment and vegetation dynamics in most of the tropical Africa. To demonstrate that northern and southern Tanzania remained loci of human occupation throughout the MSA to the present, we need multiple parameters of evidence such as precise occupation dates; macro-environmental data; dietary choices and acquisitions; selection of raw materials and procurement; tool making and use, and other social signalling that may provide answers to how these ancestors lived.

• Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald

  Universität Hannover
  Philosophische Fakultät
  Historisches Seminar
  Fachgebiet Geschichte Afrikas
  Hannover
  

• Dr. Pastory Magayane Bushozi

  University of Dar es Salaam
  Department of Archaeology and Heritage
  College of Humanities
  Sisal House
  Dar es Salaam
  Tansania (Tanzania)
  

• Geochronological and technological development: the microscopic and metric evidence from Middle Stone Age (MSA) points at Mumba rock-shelter, northern Tanzania

• . Middle and Late Stone Age symbolic revealing artifacts from Mumba rock-shelter, northern Tanzania

• The Middle Stone Age (MSA) technological patterns, innovations and behavioral changes at Bed VIA of Mumba rock-shelter, northern Tanzania.