UPSkill

A very interesting and enigmatic site in northern Africa that we still have a lot to learn about

Nabta Playa: The World's First Astronomical Site Was Built in Africa and Is Older Than Stonehenge This 7,000-year-old stone circle tracked the summer solstice and the arrival of the annual monsoon season. It's the oldest known astronomical site on Earth.

Senior Lecturer / Lecturer: Archaeology / Heritage Studies We are committed to Employment Equity when recruiting staff as prescribe by the Sol Plaatje University Policy on Employment Equity.

Nabta Playa: The World's First Astronomical Site Was Built in Africa and Is Older Than Stonehenge This 7,000-year-old stone circle tracked the summer solstice and the arrival of the annual monsoon season. It's the oldest known astronomical site on Earth.

Job Details The Rock Art Research Institute (RARI) � at the University of the Witwatersrand � hosts a digital repository of all rock art images across the continent � the African Rock Art Digital Archive (www.sarada.co.za). With over four decades' worth of research and insight, the Institute has establish...

Ancient handprints pre-dating earliest cave paintings may be the oldest-known art Impressions of hands and feet that appear to have been made by two children about 200,000 years ago may be the earliest work of human art.

Virtual exhibition breathes life into Lesotho's musical tradition and clay art Clay figurines of musicians, made in the 1930s, are being exhibited along with a new film of actual musicians playing the traditional instruments.

Todays Hole

Applications to study at Unisa in 2022 for the undergraduate and honours degrees close on 15 October 2021.
- Note that if you want to major in archaeology, you need to apply for the General BA or B.Sc degree.
- Remember that even if you are already an archaeology student at Unisa, you will still need to apply for the honours degree. Apply now if you will complete your undergraduate degree this year.
- If you have any questions about studying archaeology at Unisa, please comment on this post, send us a message through the page or e-mail Dr Natalie Swanepoel at [email protected].

APPLICATION DATES:
Undergraduate qualifications: 11 August - 15 October 2021
Honours degrees: 11 August - 15 October 2021

APPLY AT: https://www.unisa.ac.za/sites/corporate/default/Apply-for-admission

UP Campus Tours is inviting you to celebrate Mandela Day on the 18th of July 2021 with a free virtual tour of our campus. Don't miss it!

Monthly Meeting Tuesday 8 June 2021 Livestreamed

INTRODUCING THE CANGO VALLEY ARCHAEOLOGY AND PALEOSCAPE PROJECT AND A NEW ERA OF RESEARCH AT BOOMPLAAS CAVE, SOUTH AFRICA

By:
Justin Pargeter
Date:
Tue, 08/06/2021 - 18:30 to 19:30
YouTube Live link: https://youtu.be/Yf4dcuzomOs

This talk introduces the Cango Valley Archaeology and Palaeoscape Project (CAPP) whose goal is to usher in a new generation of research at Boomplaas Cave to build a more detailed framework of archaeological and palaeoecological change spanning multiple climate cycles inland of the southern Cape coastline. Boomplaas Cave is the southern Cape’s only deep sequence inland archaeological site to preserve stratified Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age deposits with rich botanical preservation. Excavated by the late Hilary Deacon between 1974 and 1979, Boomplaas is important in terms of southern African archaeology and occupation history because it is one of only a few inland sites humans occupied across multiple climate cycles with several invaluable archives of cultural and environmental importance (i.e., lithics, ochre, ostrich eggshell, charcoal, pollen, micro and macro fauna, and palaeobotanical materials). The site is also one the few in Africa for which these site-specific data are available close to several off-site terrestrial paleoenvironmental archives. This rare set of features provides an unprecedented opportunity to test the long-term effects of rapid climate change and landscape dynamics in shaping human's unique behavioural variability and ecological plasticity. If we can place Boomplaas’ rich archaeological deposits on the same timeline as nearby paleoenvironmental proxies, thereby showing contemporaneity, then we can begin to examine the relative contributions of different African regions/habitats and extreme climatic events to recent human evolution.

Link to the YouTube live event: https://youtu.be/Yf4dcuzomOs

Bio: Justin Pargeter is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at New York University and Honorary Research Associate at Wits University and the University of Johannesburg. His research focuses on human biocultural evolution tracked by the relationships between technology, cognition, and environmental change in the archaeological record. He asks the question, to what extent differences in human behaviour can be explained as adaptive responses to specific habitats and the evolution over time. His career focus has been on investigations of the later Pleistocene evolution of hunter-gatherer behaviour in sub-Saharan Africa, through experimental archaeology, lithic analyses, and the recovery of new field data. His research and teaching targets two key themes within archaeology: 1) Understanding the role of technology in human behavioural and cognitive evolution, and 2) Unravelling the relative contributions of different habitats to human evolution.

Be careful UP community

More than 100 UP students test positive for Covid-19

“It is suspected that the virus was contracted off-campus at one or more of the pubs and restaurants regularly frequented by students in the Hatfield area.” Read more> https://bit.ly/3uqPowD

Attention postgrads. The Mandela Rhodes Foundation has opened applications for the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship (Honours and Master's studies). Closing date 20 April 2021. Follow this link to their website for details: https://www.mandelarhodes.org/scholarship/apply/

Although the header image is of Great Zimbabwe and not a site in Mpumalanga, this is a good read about delirium in archaeology and some of the negative impacts it has on people's relationship with heritage.

OP-ED: Mpumalanga’s closed stone circles of colonial thought The Stone Circle’s museum has a preference for flamboyant explanations for our heritage over the mundane but vital reality of black Africans’ architectural, mining, and mercantile talent.

You can explore the tomb of Wahti online now and it is quite amazing.

Virtual tour for a tomb of Wahti in Saqqara.

During Egypt’s pyramid age, a well-connected man named Wahtye died and was laid to rest in the vast royal cemetery that now occupies the desert west of modern Cairo. His colorfully decorated tomb, apparently intact, has recently come to light some 16 feet (five meters) beneath the sand at the archaeological site known as Saqqara.

Take Virtual Tour: https://tinyurl.com/6tna37nr