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Buia, Eritrea

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Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa

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Abstract

The Buia study area is in the Dandiero basin (the northernmost part of the Eritrean Danakil depression) and is named after the Buia village situated 100 km SSE of Massawa. In this area a paleoanthropological landmark discovery was made in 1995 when a cranium of an adult individual Homo erectus/ergaster was uncovered in the alternating fluvial, deltaic and lacustrine Aalat Formation of the Dandiero Group. Through magnetostratigraphy, biostratigraphy and fission-track geochronology the cranium was dated to c. 1.0 Ma. A copious fauna and more than 200 sites containing lithic artifacts have been documented in the Buia study area. The faunal assemblage is rich in large mammals and includes representatives of typical late Early Pleistocene East African faunas. The paleoecological characteristics of the fauna with many water-dependent taxa fully agree with the kind of environment documented by the sedimentary deposits. The rich lithic assemblages both at the Homo site and in the Mulhuli Amo region are referable to the Acheulean Industry, bifaces (handaxes) being the most characteristic entities of the material. Because of its geographic location and its specific paleoenvironmental conditions, the Buia area represents a key site for the study of the Acheulean variability in Africa.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Amanuel Beyin for promoting and coordinating this volume on Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa. We thank him and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that helped to improve our manuscript. The research in the Buia region was made possible through the financial support of the Italian Ministero Pubblica Istruzione, Ministero Affari Esteri, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Special acknowledgments are also due to the National Museum of Eritrea (Asmara), Eritrean Department of Mines (Asmara), Eritrean Commission of Culture and Sports (Asmara), and French CNRS, University of Poitiers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy

    Ernesto Abbate, Mauro Papini, Lorenzo Rook & Mario Sagri

  2. Servizio di Bioarcheologia, Museo delle Civiltà, Rome, Italy

    Luca Bondioli

  3. Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy

    Carmine Collina

  4. Museo Civico Biagio Greco, Mondragone, Italy

    Carmine Collina

  5. Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Storia Antropologia Religioni Arte Spettacolo, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy

    Alfredo Coppa

  6. Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Massimo Delfino

  7. Dipartimento di Geoscienze, Università di Padova, Padua, Italy

    Massimiliano Ghinassi

  8. National Museum of Eritrea, Asmara, Eritrea

    Yosief Libsekal

  9. Unité de Formation Géosciences, Université de Poitiers, Poitiers & UMR 7194 CNRS, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France

    Roberto Macchiarelli

  10. Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro

  11. Area de Prehistória, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain

    Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro

  12. ICREA. Pg. Lluís Companys 23, Barcelona, Spain

    Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro

  13. Dipartimento di Storia, Archeologia, Geografia, Arte e Spettacolo (SAGAS), Unità di Preistoria, Università di Firenze; Museo e Istituto Fiorentino di Preistoria, Florence, Italy

    Fabio Martini

  14. Archeological Heritage Research Branch, Commission of Culture and Sports of Eritrea, Asmara, Eritrea

    Tsegai Medin

  15. Departament de Geologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Oriol Oms Lobet

  16. Laboratoire PACEA, UMR 5199 CNRS, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France

    Clément Zanolli

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  1. Ernesto Abbate
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Correspondence to Ernesto Abbate .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology and Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Amanuel Beyin

  2. Institute of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    David K. Wright

  3. Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

    Jayne Wilkins

  4. Department of Anthropology and Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Deborah I. Olszewski

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Abbate, E. et al. (2023). Buia, Eritrea. In: Beyin, A., Wright, D.K., Wilkins, J., Olszewski, D.I. (eds) Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20290-2_14

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