Professor Larry Barham PhD

Deep Roots blog post-Stone Age Africa
This is a four and half year project designed to generate data on the technological processes involved in the development of hafting. The focus is the Early to Middle Stone Age transition (Mode 2/Mode3) as preserved at Victoria Falls, Kalambo Falls and in the Luangwa Valley. The project involves dating specialists, use-wear analysts, experimental archaeologists, an ethnographer and palaeoenvironmental resesearchers.
Collaborating institutions include the University of Aberystwyth, University of Edinburgh, University of Liege, University of Zambia, Livingstone Museum (Zambia), the Moto Moto Museum (Zambia), the National Heritage and Conservation Commission (Zambia) and the Leibniz Institute for Applied Geophysics, Hannover, Germany.

This is a genetics based project that builds on previous research in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia with the focus now on the Batwa of the Kafue Flats of central Zambia and the Batwa around Lake Bangweulu, northern Zambia. The Batwa may be the descendants of former hunter-gatherer groups and whole genome analysis of saliva samples will help reconstruct the population history of these communities. The project is part of the research of the Jakobbson Lab at the University of Uppsala and involves colleagues at the Livingstone Museum. Jakobsson Lab, Uppsala. We are also examining fossil human remains from Zambia for ancient DNA that can help piece together the deep evolutionary history of the region.

The early part of the Middle Stone Age record of West Africa is poorly dated and described. Working with colleagues at the Univeristy of Ghana, Legon, (Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies) and the Ghana Monuments and Museums Board and with funding from the British Academy, we undertook excavations at the coastal sites of Asochrochona and the Regional Maritime University in 2015. These test excavations sampled sediments for dating these localities which preserve Stone Age deposits. Asochrochona is a well known site first recognised in the 1950s with a history of investigation into the 1980s. Developments in luminescence dating should enable us to provide, for the first time, an age range for this site which may span the transition from the Early to Middle Stone Age. There is a Middle Stone Age record too along the coastal cliff below the Maritime University which is undated. The dating work is being done at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales and once the results are published we plan to return with an expanded project. Ghana Stone Age blog post