Thesis title: Animal Resources Exploitation Strategies in Africa During the Late Pleistocene: Zooarchaeological Insights from Ethiopian MIS 3 Contexts (59-29 KA)
This research investigates how faunal evidence can be used to reconstruct human subsistence strategies and adaptive behaviours during the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in eastern Africa.
By integrating taxonomic, taphonomic, and palaeoecological analyses, it explores how patterns of carcass processing, transport, and consumption inform our understanding of land use, mobility, and site function among Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. Through the study of species composition, skeletal part representation, age profiles, and bone surface modifications, the project aims to identify signals of human activity - such as butchering, cooking, or marrow extraction - and to distinguish them from natural or post-depositional processes.
This analytical framework is applied to faunal remains from the open-air site of GOT-10 in southern Ethiopia, which provides an exceptional case study. The site, dated to ca. 45 – 43 ka BP (MIS 3; ~59–29 ka), preserves in situ hearths, lithics and abundant faunal material in primary contexts, offering rare evidence of human behaviour in open-air settings of the Horn of Africa - still very rare today.
By situating GOT-10 within the broader MSA record, the research contributes to discussions on behavioural variability, foraging systems, and the tempo of cultural change during the Late Pleistocene. In particular, it addresses how humans adapted to the ecological diversity of tropical grasslands, supporting models of behavioural continuity and local innovation rather than abrupt cultural replacement.