The seminar delivered by Emma Mbua (National Museums of Kenya) on the 13th April 2023 was the twelfth in the Mapping Ancient Africa series. The seminar highlighted new finds from archaeological sites in eastern Africa that have yielded bones of various animals, including early humans.
Title: Newly discovered fossil sites in Kenya and their implications in human evolution discussions
Related publication: Mbua, E., Kusaka, S., Kunimatsu, Y., Geraads, D., Sawada, Y., Brown, F.H., Sakai, T., Boisserie, J., Saneyoshi, M., Omuombo, C., Muteti, S., Hirata, T., Hayashida, A., Iwano, H., Danhara, T., Bobe, R., Jicha, B. & Nakatsukasa, M. (2016) Kantis: A new Australopithecus site on the shoulders of the Rift Valley near Nairobi, Kenya. Journal of Human Evolution 94, 28-44. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.01.006
The seminar will be delivered via Zoom. The link for the seminar can be obtained from the MAA Slack channel or by contacting the chair of this seminar Rahab Kinyanjui. If you want to know more about the Mapping Ancient Africa project visit our web pages and please do not hesitate to get in contact if you want to get involved.
I am pleased to announce that we will be holding a two day Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) workshop at the “Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome” on the 12 and 13 July (just before the INQUA 2023 Rome congress). We invite all MAA members to participate. Workshops will be lead on the two days by myself, Stefanie, Rahab and Lynne. We will cover the development of manuscripts for the proposed Quaternary International special issue, and planning for the future of the MAA network (future meetings and potential grant applications). If there are particular items that you would like to cover during the workshops then please let us know and we will do our best to include them. This event will be designed primarily for “in person” activities, however, we hope to have opportunities for people to also link in online at some plenary moments.
IMPORTANT: If you plan to attend the MAA Rome meeting in person please email me to register with the words “MAA Rome event registration” in the subject line. I can then organize appropriate levels of catering.
Related publication: Blanchet, C.L., Osborne, A.H., Tjallingii, R., Ehrmann, W., Friedrich, T., Timmermann, A., Brückmann, W. & Frank, M. (2021) Drivers of river reactivation in North Africa during the last glacial cycle. Nature Geoscience 14, 97-103. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-00671-3
The seminar will be delivered via Zoom. The link for the seminar can be obtained from the MAA Slack channel or by contacting the chair of this seminar Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr. If you want to know more about the Mapping Ancient Africa project visit our web pages and please do not hesitate to get in contact if you want to get involved.
The 9th Mapping Ancient Africa seminar, and first of 2023, took place on Thursday 19 January. The seminar was delivered by Celine Vidal (University of Cambridge) and showcased recent work on the dating of volcanic deposits to constrain the age of hominin fossils in eastern Africa.
Vidal, C.M., Lane, C.S., Asrat, A., Barfod, D.N., Mark, D.F., Tomlinson, E.L., Tadesse, A.Z., Yirgu, G., Deino, A., Hutchison, W., Mounier, A. & Oppenheimer, C. (2022) Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa. Nature601, 579-583. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04275-8
Vidal, C.M., Fontijn, K., Lane, C.S., Asrat, A., Barfod, D., Tomlinson, E.L., Piermattei, A., Hutchison, W., Tadesse, A.Z., Yirgu, G., Deino, A., Moussallam, Y., Mohr, P., Williams, F., Mather, T.A., Pyle, D.M. & Oppenheimer, C. (2022) Geochronology and glass geochemistry of major Pleistocene eruptions in the Main Ethiopian Rift: Towards a regional tephrostratigraphy. Quaternary Science Reviews 290, 107601. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107601
The seventh Mapping Ancient Africa online seminar took place on Thursday 15 December 2022. The seminar was delivered by Chantal Kabonyi (University of Bukavu) and chaired by Manu Chevalier (University of Bonn). The presentation was delivered in French with English slides.
Les trois derniers millénaires d’histoire environnementale autour du lac Kivu: De la dorsale congolaise à la dorsale congo-Nil
[The last three millennia of environmental history around Lake Kivu: From the Congolese ridge to the Congo-Nile ridge]
Chevalier, M. (2022) crestr: an R package to perform probabilistic climate reconstructions from palaeoecological datasets. Climate of the Past18, 821-844. DOI: 10.5194/cp-18-821-2022
The Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) project is offering five bursaries to help African based and/or early career researchers^ attend the up coming INQUA Rome congress. Each bursary will around Euro 1000 and should be used towards covering the cost of registration, accommodation and/or travel for the congress.
Application criteria:
Abstract submitted to INQUA Rome congress either to the Mapping Ancient Africa session, or to another session on a related topic (Deadline 1 November 2022).
Commitment to contributing an article for consideration to be published in the proposed MAA special issue of Quaternary International; for frame of references of the MAA project click here.
To apply submit the following information via emails to William Gosling as the corresponding Principle Investigator of the project. Applications should be clearly marked MAA-Application-YourName in the subject line:
Evidence of submission of an abstract to the INQUA Rome congress (copy of confirmation email and abstract).
Letter of motivation, including fit of the proposed article to the MAA aims and goals and statement of commitment to submit an article for consideration to be published in the Mapping Ancient Africa special issue of Quaternary International^^ (not more than 1 page)
Short academic CV, including highlight of up to 5 published articles indicating the scientific importance and your role in the publication (not more than 2 pages).
In the event of more applications being received than funding is available awards will be made by the MAA team (PIs and co-PIs) on the basis of the fit of the research to the MAA aims and goals. To receive funding receipts for all the expenses incurred will need to be provided (following INQUA regulations).
^^ please note that no guarantee of final publication is given or implied by this commitment. All submitted manuscripts will be subject to the usual rigorous peer review procedures for the journal.
Title: “The potentials and pitfalls of linking climate and cultural change, with a focus on the archaeological record“
The seminar will be delivered via Zoom. The link for the seminar can be obtained from the MAA Slack page, or from seminar chair and chaired by Lynne Quick.
The fifth Mapping Ancient African project took place on Monday 11 April 2022 and focused on the African Pollen Database and past vegetation change in Africa.
The seminar was delivered by Sarah Ivory (Penn State University), Rahab Kinyanjui (National Museums of Kenya), and Lynne Quick (Nelson Mandela University). The seminar covers the principles behind and the working of the African Pollen Database (why make data openly available?) and the latest advances in eastern and southern Africa.
For more about the African Pollen Database check out:
Ecology of the past 