A Hoard of Stone Beads near Lake Chad, Nigeria

In 1980, a small pot containing 622 carnelian and quartz beads was found accidentally at Ala, in the Nigerian part of the clay plain south of Lake Chad. It appears to constitute a hoard of wealth which its owner buried and subsequently failed to retrieve. Beads of this sort first appear in this area in the second half of the first millennium A.D., but also occur in second-millennium deposits. However, they are usually found as grave goods, and the Ala discovery is almost the only example of a hoard of such beads known to the author. Their presence on the stoneless Chadian plain indicates the development of trading contacts with other areas, but neither the source of the raw materials nor the place of manufacture of the beads is known. The quartz could have come from the Cameroon Mountains but the origin of the carnelian, often assumed to be from India, remains problematic. More attention needs to be paid to the possibility of West African sources and production, but there is also an urgent necessity both to compile a corpus of firmly dated material and to conduct characterization studies that could throw more light on the origin of the carnelian

Archaeology at the University of New England, 1975-6

An account of current research at the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of New England, was published in Australian Archaeology 3, just a year ago (Connah, 1975) . The purpose of the present account is to bring the reader up to date with archaeological activities at Armidale over the last year

Current Research at the Department Of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of New England

Research interests include topics outside as well as inside Australia, for instance my own work on the Late Stone Age and Iron Age of West Africa has recently led to the publication of the Archaeology of Benin, by Oxford University Press. Further material is in preparation for publication concerning the Lake Chad area of N.E. Nigeria. Likewise, Iain Davidson is presently completing work on man-environment relationships during the late Pleistocene in Spain

Battlefield Casualty: The Archaeology of a Captured Gun

Many artefacts in museums lack adequate information about the context from which they were collected. Not surprisingly, this often applies to artefacts recovered from battlefields, where chaotic conditions can result in uncertainty about their origins. This paper examines the case of a Second World War German 88 mm gun preserved in an Australian museum. The museum had little contextual information for this weapon, except that the Australian Army captured it in North Africa in 1942, probably after the Second Battle of El Alamein. However, an archaeological analysis of the gun, particularly of damage incurred during battle, can link it to photographs taken after the battle and re-establish its historical context and the circumstances of its acquisition. In this way, a museum artefact can become more than a mere exhibit: it can be made to document its own past

Estimating individual cone fundamentals from their color-matching functions

Estimation of individual spectral cone fundamentals from color-matching functions is a classical and longstanding problem in color science. In this paper we propose a novel method to carry out this estimation based on a linear optimization technique, employing an assumption of a priori knowledge of the retinal absorptance functions. The result is an estimation of the combined lenticular and macular filtration for an individual, along with the nine coefficients in the linear combination that relates their color-matching functions to their estimated spectral-cone fundamentals. We test the method on the individual Stiles and Burch color-matching functions and derive cone-fundamental estimations for different viewing fields and matching experiment repetition. We obtain cone-fundamental estimations that are remarkably similar to those available in the literature. This suggests that the method yields results that are close to the true fundamentals

Man and a Lake

Raymond Mauny represents an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the past that is particularly necessary in Africa where history and prehistory are so inextricably mixed. It is our task to reconstruct the past using all the sources of information available but the type of reconstruction that we produce will depend on the «models» or conceptual structures that we invent to explain the past. Models that emphasize archaeological artifacts rather than Man’s natural history are now widely rejected and if we wish to see how Man has reacted to the differing environments in which he has found himself we must adopt a model emphasizing human ecology : particularly subsistence economies. In this paper I have attempted to use the Nigerian shores of Lake Chad as an example area : I present a reconstruction of Man’s natural history throughout his contact with that area, from the earliest evidence that we have, down to the present day. The area is part of the transcontinental savanna belt but its conditions are considerably ameliorated by the presence of Lake Chad and of its drainage basin. The complex interplay of stress and opportunity that result have created conditions that have radically affected human settlement : causing continued occupation of some sites and successive abandonment of others. There were probably people in the general area at least 50,000 years ago but the bulk of our evidence dates from only about 3000 years ago when settlement of the firki plains took place as Lake Chad shrank in response to increasingly dry conditions. The archaeological and historical record show how Man gradually adjusted his subsistence to a fine balance with the various environments of the area ; establishing a tradition of pastoralism and grain growing that has persisted till the present time and that modern development projects can only ignore at their peril. past. Models that emphasize archaeological artifacts rather than Man’s natural history are now widely rejected and if we wish to see how Man has reacted to the differing environments in which he has found himself we must adopt a model emphasizing human ecology : particularly subsistence economies. In this paper I have attempted to use the Nigerian shores of Lake Chad as an example area : I present a reconstruction of Man’s natural history throughout his contact with that area, from the earliest evidence that we have, down to the present day. The area is part of the transcontinental savanna belt but its conditions are considerably ameliorated by the presence of Lake Chad and of its drainage basin. The complex interplay of stress and opportunity that result have created condi¬ tions that have radically affected human settlement : causing continued occupa¬ tion of some sites and successive abandonment of others. There were probably people in the general area at least 50,000 years ago but the bulk of our evidence dates from only about 3000 years ago when settlement of the firki plains took place as Lake Chad shrank in response to increasingly dry conditions. The archaeo¬ logical and historical record show how Man gradually adjusted his subsistence to a fine balance with the various environments of the area ; establishing a tradition of pastoralism and grain growing that has persisted till the present time and that modern development projects can only ignore at their peril.Raymond Mauny symbolise l’approche interdisciplinaire de l’étude du passé, ce qui est particulièrement nécessaire en Afrique où l’histoire et la préhistoire sont si inextricablement mêlées. Notre tâche est de reconstruire le passé en utilisant toutes les sources d’information disponibles, mais le type de reconstruction que nous produirons dépendra des «modèles» ou des structures conceptuelles que nous inventerons pour expliquer le passé. Les systèmes qui mettent l’accent sur des objets archéologiques façonnés plutôt que sur l’histoire naturelle de l’Homme, sont maintenant largement rejetés et si nous souhaitons voir comment l’Homme a réagi aux divers environnements dans lesquels il s’est trouvé, nous devons adopter un système s’appuyant sur l’écologie humaine : en particulier les économies de subsistance. Dans cet article j’ai essayé d’utiliser comme exemple spatial les rivages nigérians du lac Tchad : je présente une reconstruction de l’histoire naturelle de l’Homme à travers ses rapports avec cette zone depuis les premiers témoignages que nous possédons jusqu’à maintenant. Cette zone est une partie de la ceinture des savanes, mais ses conditions sont considérablement améliorées par la présence du lac Tchad et de son bassin de drainage. L’interaction complexe d’éléments défavorables et favorables qui en résulte, a créé des conditions qui ont radicalement influencé l’installation humaine : causant l’occupation continue de certains sites et l’abandon successif d’autres. Il y a au moins 50.000 ans, la zone a été probablement habitée, mais l’ensemble de nos sources date seulement de 3000 ans, lorsque l’occupation des plaines firki a pris place à cause d’un rétrécissement du lac Tchad du à une augmentation de la sécheresse. L’information archéologique et historique montre comment l’Homme a graduellement adapté sa subsistance, en l’équilibrant avec les divers environnements de cette zone ; établissant une tradition pastorale et céréalière qui a persisté jusqu’à présent et que les projets modernes de développement ne peuvent ignorer qu’à leur détriment.Connah Graham. Man and a Lake. In: 2000 ans d’histoire africaine. Le sol, la parole et l’écrit. Mélanges en hommage à Raymond Mauny. Tome I. Paris : Société française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 1981. pp. 161-178. (Bibliothèque d'histoire d'outre-mer. Études, 5-6-1