Programmes > Par auteur > D'errico Francesco

This paper presents the initial results of a multi-pronged approach to the analysis of newly-excavated assemblages of beads from three rockshelter sites in northern Malawi: Hora 1, Mazinga 1, and Kadawonda 1. Excavations in 2016 and 2017 at these sites yielded an assemblage of over 150 beads and bead preforms made of terrestrial and aquatic shell and, to a lesser extent, bone and ostrich eggshell. Together, the assemblages span the Later Stone Age to Iron Age and constitute by far the oldest bead assemblages in Malawi. The assemblages present an unparalleled opportunity to examine change over time in beads and bead-production in the region. Earlier excavations (1950) at Hora 1 yielded the only complete LSA skeletons known from Malawi, which are also the source of Africa's oldest DNA (at 8100 BP); this provides further opportunity to understand ornament production within its larger cultural and biological context. A collective effort of specialists in Canada, the United States, and France, the analysis of these ornaments and their production stages integrates a range of methodological approaches: raw-materials characterization, radiometric dating, isotope analysis, morphometric analysis, residue and use-wear analysis, chaîne-opératoire reconstruction, and experimental archaeology. The combined results show technological choice and cultural transmission in LSA societies over time and space, and across at least three environmental and climatic transitions: the Last Glacial Maximum, the dawn of the Holocene, and the end of the African Humid Period. They further serve as a basis of comparison between bead assemblages of the LSA bead and the Iron Age (after about 2 thousand years ago).