M E Prendergast
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 36187 |
|---|---|
| NOME | M E Prendergast |
| PRENOMES | M E |
| SOBRENOME | Prendergast |
| ASSINATURA | PRENDERGAST M E |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Saint Louis University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0275-6795 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 589 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 43 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2007 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 16 |
Plant processing and foodways in the Pastoral Neolithic
Pastoralism has long been conceptualized as an animal-centered lifeway, with plants treated as marginal or ancillary resources. This is particularly true in Africa where rich ethnographic records of present-day pastoralism and scant archaeobotanical evidence have combined to create a focus on livestock in the archaeological record. This study challenges that perspective by demonstrating that plant use formed an integral component of Pastoral Neol…
Detecting architectural features and stratigraphic deposits at a Pastoral Neolithic site using ground-penetrating radar
Cattle Ranching on the Northeastern Border of New Spain
Colonial borderlands provide an opportunity to study innovation of new foodways and persistence of traditional ones amid unfamiliar and potentially risky environments and dynamic cultural contexts. Archaeological research in northern New Spain has revealed foodways diversity as Spaniards attempted to replicate agropastoral systems and Indigenous peoples incorporated, to varying extents, new plants and animals into their culinary practices. These …
Hunting, Fishing, and Herding in Later Stone Age and Iron Age Zambia
Automated SEM-EDS mineralogical characterisation of archaeological pottery from Luxmanda and Mumba Rockshelter, Tanzania
Reconciling Archaeology and Legacy at Gishimangeda Cave, Tanzania
Late Pleistocene to late Holocene palaeoecology and human foraging at Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar Island
Background Climate change played a major role in shaping regional human-environment interactions in Africa during the late Pleistocene-Holocene, but this topic has not been exhaustively studied, particularly in eastern Africa. While there is growing evidence that the coastal and island settings in this region played a critical role in human evolution, combined archaeological and palaeoenvironmental studies have tended to focus on the arid interio…
Genetics and Archaeology
Ancient Human DNA and African Population History
Ancient DNA has emerged as a powerful tool for investigating the human past and reconstructing the movements, mixtures, and adaptations that have structured genetic variation throughout human history. While the study of genome-wide ancient human DNA was initially restricted to regions with temperate climates, methodological breakthroughs have now extended the reach of ancient DNA analysis to parts of the world with hot and humid climates that are…
Detecting and mapping the 'ephemeral
Common assumptions about the ephemeral archaeological signature of pastoralist settlements have limited the application of geophysical techniques in the investigation of past herding societies. Here, the authors present a geophysical survey of Luxmanda, Tanzania, the largest-known settlement documented for the Pastoral Neolithic era in eastern Africa (c. 5000-1200 BP). The results demonstrate the value and potential of fluxgate gradiometry for th…
Diet, economy, and culinary practices at the height of precolonial Swahili urbanism
Swahili cuisine is known across Africa and globally as a highly distinctive product of a cosmopolitan, coastal, urban society. Here we present a comprehensive study of precolonial Swahili diet and culinary practices at the coastal town of Songo Mnara, positioning archaeological and ethnographic understandings of cuisine in a long-term coastal tradition. We explore contemporary food cultures and then present the first direct evidence for precoloni…
Iron Age hunting and herding in coastal eastern Africa
The morphological differentiation of African bovids in highly fragmented zooarchaeological assemblages is a major hindrance to reconstructing the nature and spread of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa. Here we employ collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), coupled with recently published African ZooMS reference datasets, to identify domesticates and wild bovids in Iron Age assemblages at the cav…
The Middle to Later Stone Age transition at Panga ya Saidi, in the tropical coastal forest of eastern Africa
Grinding-stone features from the Pastoral Neolithic at Luxmanda, Tanzania
The initial spread of food production in eastern Africa is associated with livestock herding during the Pastoral Neolithic. Recent excavation at Luxmanda, Tanzania, a site dating to c. 3000 BP, revealed circular installations of lower grinding stones and numerous handstones. This discovery, unprecedented for this era, challenges previous ideas about pastoralist mobility and subsistence
Sorting the sheep from the goats in the Pastoral Neolithic
Organic technology in the Pastoral Neolithic
Year-old record of Middle and Later Stone Age innovation in an East African tropical forest
The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Africa has been debated as a significant shift in human technological, cultural, and cognitive evolution. However, the majority of research on this transition is currently focused on southern Africa due to a lack of long-term, stratified sites across much of the African continent. Here, we report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya. Fo…
Subsistence mosaics, forager-farmer interactions, and the transition to food production in eastern Africa
The spread of agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa has long been attributed to the large-scale migration of Bantu-speaking groups out of their west Central African homeland from about 4000 years ago. These groups are seen as having expanded rapidly across the sub-continent, carrying an ‘Iron Age’ package of farming, metal-working, and pottery, and largely replacing pre-existing hunter-gatherers along the way. While elements of the ‘traditional’ …
Fishing in a fluctuating landscape
Pastoral Neolithic Settlement at Luxmanda, Tanzania
The later Holocene spread of pastoralism throughout eastern Africa profoundly changed socio-economic and natural landscapes. During the Pastoral Neolithic (ca. 5000–1200 B.P.), herders spread through southern Kenya and northern Tanzania—areas previously occupied only by hunter-gatherers—eventually developing the specialized forms of pastoralism that remain vital in this region today. Research on ancient pastoralism has been primarily restricted t…
Boots on the ground in Africa's ancient DNA 'revolution
Recent methodological advances have increased the pace and scale of African ancient DNA (aDNA) research, inciting a rush to sample broadly from museum collections, and raising ethical concerns over the destruction of human remains. In the absence of discipline-wide protocols, teams are often left to navigate aDNA sampling on an individual basis, contributing to widely varying practices that do not always protect the long-term integrity of collect…
Animals and their uses in the Swahili world
Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast
Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa-now known as the 'Swahili coast'-were involved in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non-native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisa…
Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory
Recent archaeological research has firmly established eastern Africa's offshore islands as important localities for understanding the region's pre-Swahili maritime adaptations and early Indian Ocean trade connections. While the importance of the sea and small offshore islands to the development of urbanized and mercantile Swahili societies has long been recognized, the formative stages of island colonization—and in particular the processes by whi…
Reinvestigation of Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar, reveals Later Stone Age coastal habitation, early Holocene abandonment and Iron Age reoccupation
The late Pleistocene and Holocene history of eastern Africa is complex and major gaps remain in our understanding of human occupation during this period. Questions concerning the identities, geographical distributions and chronologies of foraging, herding and agricultural populations — often problematically equated with the chronological labels ‘Later Stone Age (LSA)’, ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Iron Age’ — are still unresolved. Previous studies at the sit…
An Experimental Study of Bipolar and Freehand Knapping of Naibor Soit Quartz from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania)
Recent excavations carried out in several Bed I and Bed II sites have shown that hominins at Olduvai Gorge used both bipolar and freehand knapping methods for quartz reduction. Due to the petrographic nature of quartz and to its heterogeneous response to fracture, the identification of bipolar knapping at any given site can be ambiguous and controversial. This work aims to overcome this problem by developing an experimental referential framework …
New excavations at Mumba Rockshelter, Tanzania
Mumba Rockshelter in northern Tanzania presents one of the richest and most complete archaeological sequences in East Africa for the Middle Stone Age through the Iron Age. Past excavations of the shelter revealed an extremely rich lithic and faunal assemblage, but were problematic, either because of poor excavation and recording methods (in the 1930s), or because the materials were never fully studied (in the 1979/1981 excavations). In both cases…
Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory
Recent archaeological research has firmly established eastern Africa's offshore islands as important localities for understanding the region's pre-Swahili maritime adaptations and early Indian Ocean trade connections. While the importance of the sea and small offshore islands to the development of urbanized and mercantile Swahili societies has long been recognized, the formative stages of island colonization—and in particular the processes by whi…
Indian Ocean Food Globalisation and Africa
Resource intensification in the Late Upper Paleolithic
Reinvestigation of Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar, reveals Later Stone Age coastal habitation, early Holocene abandonment and Iron Age reoccupation
The late Pleistocene and Holocene history of eastern Africa is complex and major gaps remain in our understanding of human occupation during this period. Questions concerning the identities, geographical distributions and chronologies of foraging, herding and agricultural populations — often problematically equated with the chronological labels ‘Later Stone Age (LSA)’, ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Iron Age’ — are still unresolved. Previous studies at the sit…
Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast
Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa-now known as the 'Swahili coast'-were involved in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non-native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisa…
Middle Stone Age archaeology at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
Iron Age agriculture, fishing and trade in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania
Small-scale excavations were recently undertaken at the site of Ukunju Cave in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania, to collect new bioarchaeological and material culture data relating to the site's occupation and the nature of early subsistence and long-distance trade in the region. Our findings suggest that occupation of the cave began during the Middle Iron Age (MIA, seventh to tenth centuries AD), as indicated by the presence of local Early Tana T…
Pastoral Neolithic Settlement at Luxmanda, Tanzania
The later Holocene spread of pastoralism throughout eastern Africa profoundly changed socio-economic and natural landscapes. During the Pastoral Neolithic (ca. 5000–1200 B.P.), herders spread through southern Kenya and northern Tanzania—areas previously occupied only by hunter-gatherers—eventually developing the specialized forms of pastoralism that remain vital in this region today. Research on ancient pastoralism has been primarily restricted t…
Sorting the sheep from the goats in the Pastoral Neolithic
The Middle to Later Stone Age transition at Panga ya Saidi, in the tropical coastal forest of eastern Africa
Boots on the ground in Africa's ancient DNA 'revolution
Recent methodological advances have increased the pace and scale of African ancient DNA (aDNA) research, inciting a rush to sample broadly from museum collections, and raising ethical concerns over the destruction of human remains. In the absence of discipline-wide protocols, teams are often left to navigate aDNA sampling on an individual basis, contributing to widely varying practices that do not always protect the long-term integrity of collect…
Poison arrows and bone utensils in late Pleistocene eastern Africa
Most of our current knowledge of late Pleistocene African bone technology is drawn from southern African sites, with recent discoveries indicating that bone- and stone-tipped arrows (propelled by a bow) were in use prior to 60,000 years BP. Integration of archaeological with ethnographic data similarly suggests that hunting with poison-tipped arrows on the African continent has an antiquity of at least 24,000 years. Unfortunately, similar analysi…
Iron Age hunting and herding in coastal eastern Africa
The morphological differentiation of African bovids in highly fragmented zooarchaeological assemblages is a major hindrance to reconstructing the nature and spread of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa. Here we employ collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), coupled with recently published African ZooMS reference datasets, to identify domesticates and wild bovids in Iron Age assemblages at the cav…
Middle Holocene fishing strategies in East Africa
A zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis is presented for the faunal remains from the Pundo shell midden in northern Nyanza province (Kenya), which contains Kansyore ceramics and dates to ca. 8000-7600 cal. BP. The faunal assemblage is overwhelmingly dominated by fish and molluscs, of which only the fish data are presented in detail. Taxonomic identifications suggest a diachronic change in relative species abundance, with cichlids becoming inc…
Pastoral Neolithic sites on the southern Mbulu Plateau, Tanzania
As part of a larger project examining the introduction of herding into northern Tanzania, surveys and excavations were conducted at the southern edge of the Mbulu Plateau, documenting the presence of Narosura ceramics dating to the early third millennium BP, as well as a Later Stone Age occupation dated via ostrich eggshell to the tenth millennium BP. This marks the southernmost extent of the Pastoral Neolithic in eastern Africa. The paucity of s…
Forager variability and transitions to food production in secondary settings
"Forager variability and transitions to food production in secondary settings: Kansyore and Pastoral Neolithic economies in East Africa." , 44(2), pp. 276–277
New Dates for Kansyore and Pastoral Neolithic Ceramics in the Eyasi Basin, Tanzania
This paper presents and contextualizes two radiocarbon dates directly obtained from Kansyore and Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (Narosura) ceramic sherds from sites near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. The dates improve upon those obtained during prior research, which were compromised by problematic samples and stratigraphic disturbance. This underscores the importance of direct dating on diagnostic ceramics in areas with poor site integrity. The Eyasi Basin…
Diet, economy, and culinary practices at the height of precolonial Swahili urbanism
Swahili cuisine is known across Africa and globally as a highly distinctive product of a cosmopolitan, coastal, urban society. Here we present a comprehensive study of precolonial Swahili diet and culinary practices at the coastal town of Songo Mnara, positioning archaeological and ethnographic understandings of cuisine in a long-term coastal tradition. We explore contemporary food cultures and then present the first direct evidence for precoloni…
Kansyore fisher-foragers and transitions to food production in East Africa
The site of Wadh Lang'o in southern Nyanza Province (Kenya) has produced a very large faunal assemblage in association with Kansyore, Elmenteitan and Urewe ceramics. The stratigraphy of the site appears to be intact and six dates have been obtained from the sequence, making this the best opportunity to look at diachronic change in subsistence strategies in this region. The main results of the zooarchaeological analysis are presented here, with em…
Organic technology in the Pastoral Neolithic
Detecting and mapping the 'ephemeral
Common assumptions about the ephemeral archaeological signature of pastoralist settlements have limited the application of geophysical techniques in the investigation of past herding societies. Here, the authors present a geophysical survey of Luxmanda, Tanzania, the largest-known settlement documented for the Pastoral Neolithic era in eastern Africa (c. 5000-1200 BP). The results demonstrate the value and potential of fluxgate gradiometry for th…
Diversity in East African foraging and food producing communities
Reconciling Archaeology and Legacy at Gishimangeda Cave, Tanzania
New excavations at Mumba Rockshelter, Tanzania
Mumba Rockshelter in northern Tanzania presents one of the richest and most complete archaeological sequences in East Africa for the Middle Stone Age through the Iron Age. Past excavations of the shelter revealed an extremely rich lithic and faunal assemblage, but were problematic, either because of poor excavation and recording methods (in the 1930s), or because the materials were never fully studied (in the 1979/1981 excavations). In both cases…
Comparing and Synthesizing Unifacial Stone Tool Reduction Indices
Intensity of stone tool reduction has important implications for understanding hominid behavior, tool use and modification, mobility, and cognitive ability. There are a variety of reduction indices available to the lithic analyst. While each has strengths and weaknesses, different index values obtained on the same stone tools do not necessarily correlate with each other. Significantly different interpretations of an assemblage may be made dependi…
Resource intensification in the Late Upper Paleolithic
The Middle to Later Stone Age Technological Transition in East Africa. New Data from Mumba Rockshelter Bed V (Tanzania) and their Implications for the Origin of Modern Human Behavior
Recent re-excavation of Mumba Rockshelter unearthed an unbiased lithic sample from Bed V. Technological analysis has permitted a reinterpretation of the so-called Mumba Industry, a transitional industry between Middle and Later Stone Ages originally defined by Mehlman (1989). Our data confirm Mehlman’s observation that the “evolutionary” markers in Mumba Bed V are basically typological. However, our study differs from his in that we classify all …
Forager variability and transitions to food production in secondary settings
"Forager variability and transitions to food production in secondary settings: Kansyore and Pastoral Neolithic economies in East Africa." , 44(2), pp. 276–277
Joséphine Lesur
New excavations at the FLK Zinjanthropus site and its surrounding landscape and their behavioral implications
Renewed excavations at FLK Zinj and its surrounding landscape have yielded valuable information regarding its paleoecological situation and the prehistoric behavioral function of the site. The density of materials at the main cluster of the site excavated by Leakey contrasts with the bone and lithic scatters surrounding the site. The location of FLK Zinj, situated a few hundred meters away from a freshwater spring, would have enabled hominins acc…
Diversity in East African foraging and food producing communities
Kansyore fisher-foragers and transitions to food production in East Africa
The site of Wadh Lang'o in southern Nyanza Province (Kenya) has produced a very large faunal assemblage in association with Kansyore, Elmenteitan and Urewe ceramics. The stratigraphy of the site appears to be intact and six dates have been obtained from the sequence, making this the best opportunity to look at diachronic change in subsistence strategies in this region. The main results of the zooarchaeological analysis are presented here, with em…
Middle Holocene fishing strategies in East Africa
A zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis is presented for the faunal remains from the Pundo shell midden in northern Nyanza province (Kenya), which contains Kansyore ceramics and dates to ca. 8000-7600 cal. BP. The faunal assemblage is overwhelmingly dominated by fish and molluscs, of which only the fish data are presented in detail. Taxonomic identifications suggest a diachronic change in relative species abundance, with cichlids becoming inc…
An Experimental Study of Bipolar and Freehand Knapping of Naibor Soit Quartz from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania)
Recent excavations carried out in several Bed I and Bed II sites have shown that hominins at Olduvai Gorge used both bipolar and freehand knapping methods for quartz reduction. Due to the petrographic nature of quartz and to its heterogeneous response to fracture, the identification of bipolar knapping at any given site can be ambiguous and controversial. This work aims to overcome this problem by developing an experimental referential framework …
Social Anthropology and Human Origins by Alan Barnard
Pastoral Neolithic sites on the southern Mbulu Plateau, Tanzania
As part of a larger project examining the introduction of herding into northern Tanzania, surveys and excavations were conducted at the southern edge of the Mbulu Plateau, documenting the presence of Narosura ceramics dating to the early third millennium BP, as well as a Later Stone Age occupation dated via ostrich eggshell to the tenth millennium BP. This marks the southernmost extent of the Pastoral Neolithic in eastern Africa. The paucity of s…
New Dates for Kansyore and Pastoral Neolithic Ceramics in the Eyasi Basin, Tanzania
This paper presents and contextualizes two radiocarbon dates directly obtained from Kansyore and Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (Narosura) ceramic sherds from sites near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. The dates improve upon those obtained during prior research, which were compromised by problematic samples and stratigraphic disturbance. This underscores the importance of direct dating on diagnostic ceramics in areas with poor site integrity. The Eyasi Basin…
Middle Stone Age archaeology at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
Indian Ocean Food Globalisation and Africa
Iron Age agriculture, fishing and trade in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania
Small-scale excavations were recently undertaken at the site of Ukunju Cave in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania, to collect new bioarchaeological and material culture data relating to the site's occupation and the nature of early subsistence and long-distance trade in the region. Our findings suggest that occupation of the cave began during the Middle Iron Age (MIA, seventh to tenth centuries AD), as indicated by the presence of local Early Tana T…
Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory
Recent archaeological research has firmly established eastern Africa's offshore islands as important localities for understanding the region's pre-Swahili maritime adaptations and early Indian Ocean trade connections. While the importance of the sea and small offshore islands to the development of urbanized and mercantile Swahili societies has long been recognized, the formative stages of island colonization—and in particular the processes by whi…
Reinvestigation of Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar, reveals Later Stone Age coastal habitation, early Holocene abandonment and Iron Age reoccupation
The late Pleistocene and Holocene history of eastern Africa is complex and major gaps remain in our understanding of human occupation during this period. Questions concerning the identities, geographical distributions and chronologies of foraging, herding and agricultural populations — often problematically equated with the chronological labels ‘Later Stone Age (LSA)’, ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Iron Age’ — are still unresolved. Previous studies at the sit…
Poison arrows and bone utensils in late Pleistocene eastern Africa
Most of our current knowledge of late Pleistocene African bone technology is drawn from southern African sites, with recent discoveries indicating that bone- and stone-tipped arrows (propelled by a bow) were in use prior to 60,000 years BP. Integration of archaeological with ethnographic data similarly suggests that hunting with poison-tipped arrows on the African continent has an antiquity of at least 24,000 years. Unfortunately, similar analysi…
Animals and their uses in the Swahili world
Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast
Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa-now known as the 'Swahili coast'-were involved in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non-native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisa…
Year-old record of Middle and Later Stone Age innovation in an East African tropical forest
The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Africa has been debated as a significant shift in human technological, cultural, and cognitive evolution. However, the majority of research on this transition is currently focused on southern Africa due to a lack of long-term, stratified sites across much of the African continent. Here, we report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya. Fo…
Subsistence mosaics, forager-farmer interactions, and the transition to food production in eastern Africa
The spread of agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa has long been attributed to the large-scale migration of Bantu-speaking groups out of their west Central African homeland from about 4000 years ago. These groups are seen as having expanded rapidly across the sub-continent, carrying an ‘Iron Age’ package of farming, metal-working, and pottery, and largely replacing pre-existing hunter-gatherers along the way. While elements of the ‘traditional’ …
Fishing in a fluctuating landscape
Geography (37 obras) · Archaeology (34 obras) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (23 obras) · Biology (17 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (16 obras) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (15 obras) · Geology (15 obras) · Tanzania (14 obras) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (11 obras) · Pleistocene (11 obras)