Ostrich eggshell bead diameter in the Holocene: Regional variation with the spread of herding in eastern and southern Africa.

ABSTRACT: Despite their ubiquity in Holocene African archaeological assemblages, ostrich eggshell (OES) beads are rarely studied in detail. An exception is in southern Africa, where there is a proposed relationship between OES bead diameter and the arrival of herding ~2000 years before present. In 1987, Leon Jacobson first observed that beads from forager sites in Namibia tended to be smaller than those associated with herder sites. Studies examining bead size around the Western Cape have generally confirmed Jacobson's findings, though the driving forces of the diameter change remain unknown. Since this time, diameter has become an informal way of distinguishing forager and herder assemblages in southern Africa, but no large-scale studies of OES bead variation have been undertaken. Here we present a

SUBMITTER: Miller JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6880992 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature