Chilga Kernet: an Acheulean landscape on Ethiopia's western plateau. (News & Notes).

Chilga Kernet: an Acheulean landscape on Ethiopia's western plateau. (News & Notes). In the closing days of the British Abyssinian campaign, J. DesmondClark John Desmond Clark (more commonly J. Desmond Clark, April 10, 1916 - February 14, 2002) was a British archaeologist noted particularly for his work on prehistoric Africa.Educated at Monkton Combe School near Bath, J. Desmond Clark graduated with a B.A. spent a hurried hour at a Fauresmith site east of Gondar,Ethiopia, collecting artefacts that are now described as Acheulianbifaces. He then left to participate in the military assault on the town(Clark 1945) and the next day, 27 November 1941, witnessed the fall ofGondar and the final liberation of Ethiopia from Italian rule. Shortlythereafter, Moysey excavated a small rock shelter near the formerItalian military station at Gorgora (Moysey 1943) and L.S.B. Leakey(1943) described the collections. This pioneering work represents theentire published corpus on Palaeolithic archaeology in the Gondar, Gojamand Welega Regions of Ethiopia Ethiopia is divided into 9 ethnically-based administrative regions (kililoch; singular - kilil) and two chartered cities (astedader akababiwach, singular - astedader akabibi). (FIGURE 1). Although these two reportsare among the earliest published records of archaeological sites for thecountry, their significance has been eclipsed by more recentpalaeoanthropological study of the Rift Valley of eastern Ethiopia,particularly of the Afar and Awash localities. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Since 1998 the Blue Nile Basin Survey Project has focused onOligocene vertebrate palaeontology and palaeobotany west of Gondar. In2002, investigations began at a location in the Chilga district that issimilar to Clark's Gondar Fauresmith site. This preliminary worksuggests that Clark's Gondar site may be part of a much moreextensive Acheulean record on the Plateau. At Chilga Kernet(12[degrees]31'56.33"N, 36[degrees]07'31.83"E), asat Gondar, the raw material is predominately fine-grained basalt andsurface-collected artefacts are so weathered that `all evidence of theirhuman origin except their shape has been lost' (Clark 1945: 22). The distribution of the Acheulian techno-complex has beeninterpreted as the result of palaeo-climatic and ecological factors,such as the glaciation and desertification of the Sahara (Clark 1994;Rogers et al. 1994). Given its unique location on the western plateau ofEthiopia and its proximity to the Saharan desert of Sudan, continuedwork at Chilga Kernet will contribute to our understanding of thefactors affecting the hominid hominidAny member of the zoological family Hominidae (order Primates), which consists of the great apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos) as well as human beings. colonization of Africa and adjacent partsof the Old World. Chilga Kernet's surface is littered with several thousand handaxes and other heavily weathered basalt implements. Documentation beganby establishing control points using fixed GPS receivers andpost-processing geodetic See geodetic coordinates. triangulation triangulation:see geodesy. The use of two known coordinates to determine the location of a third. Used by ship captains for centuries to navigate on the high seas, triangulation is employed in GPS receivers to pinpoint their current location on earth. (FIGURE 2). Then a sub-centimetreaccuracy GPS system was used to create a contour map, to map samplecollection areas, to lay out three test trenches and to document asubset of the surface artefacts. Surface collections were made in 2x5-mblocks situated on three distinct topographic surfaces. Each of the 111artefacts in these units was mapped, collected and analysed. Ageestimates of the deposits are not available at this time. [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Of the three test trenches, only one encountered in situ artefacts(FIGURE 3). Artefacts and bone fragments were mapped in the 2x2-mexcavation (FIGURE 4: EX3). These were found at the base of a fine tocoarse clayball pebble conglomerate. Most artefacts were resting on, ornear, the contact of this zone with the underlying Oligocene sediments. [FIGURES 3-4 OMITTED] Similar deposits are exposed at roughly the same elevation on thesides of the Chilga Kernet hilltop. FIGURE 4 illustrates a pattern oflow surface artefact density at the higher elevations and a zone ofgreater density beginning near the 1891-m line. Mapping concentrated onzones of artefact frequency change rather than on the construction of acomprehensive distribution map. Many more artefacts are strewn strew?tr.v. strewed, strewn or strewed, strew��ing, strews1. To spread here and there; scatter: strewing flowers down the aisle.2. down theslopes to the north all the way to the banks of the Kernet River, whichis roughly 40 m lower in elevation. These observations suggest that muchof the upper portions of the Chilga Kernet hill are underlain by an insitu Acheulean landscape of approximately 2 ha. This project receivedpartial support from NSF NSF - National Science Foundation Grant 0001259. References CLARK, J.D. 1945. A Kenya Fauresmith factory and homesite atGondar, Northern Abyssinia, Transactions of the Royal Society of SouthAfrica 31: 19-27. 1994. The Acheulian Industrial Complex in Africa and elsewhere, inR.S. Corruccini & R.L. Ciochon (ed.), Integrative paths to the past:paleoanthropological advances in honor ore Clark Howell: 451-69.Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice Hall. LEAKEY, L.B.S. 1943. The industries of the Gorgora Rock Shelter,Lake Tana. Journal of East African and Ugandan Natural History Society17:199-208. MOYSEY, C.F. 1943. Excavation of a rock shelter at Gorgora, LakeTana, Ethiopia, Journal of East African and Ugandan Natural HistorySociety 17: 196-8. ROGERS, M.J., J.W.K. HARRIS & C.S. FEIBEL. 1994. Changingpatterns of land-use by Plio-Pleistocene hominids in the Lake TurkanaBasin, Journal of Human Evolution 27: 139-58. LAWRENCE TODD, MICHELLE MICHELLE Mid-Infrared Echelle Spectrograph GLANTZ & JOHN KAPPELMAN * * Todd, Laboratory for Human Paleoecology pa��le��o��e��col��o��gyn.The branch of ecology that deals with the interaction between ancient organisms and their environment. , Department ofAnthropology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO 80523-1787,USA. lctodd@lamar.colostate.edu Glantz, Department of Anthropology,Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO 80523-1787, USA. Kappelman,Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712-1086,USA.