Browsing by Author "Asrat, Seminew"

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    An Investigation of Later Stone Age Lithic Assemblages from Laga Oda Rock shelter, Southeastern Ethiopia
    (Addis ababa university, 2021-09) Asrat, Seminew; Derara (PhD), Worku
    The Laga Oda rock shelter stands among the key sites in Ethiopia yielding evidence of LSA lithic assemblages. Despite an initial preliminary report in the 1970s, a more detailed and state-of-the art techno-typological and attribute analysis of the recovered LSA lithic assemblages remains limited. This study examined the LSA lithic assemblage (n=563) of the Laga Oda rock shelter using techno-typological and attribute features and provided insight into the behavioral, technological, subsistence, and occupation nature of prehistoric populations of southeastern Ethiopia. Various distinct typologies of LSA artifacts with retouch and none-retouch elements including flakes, cores, flake fragments, backed pieces, scrapers, denticulate, and burins have been documented. The lithic technology and morphologies of the assemblages suggest production techniques might have involved multiple type of percussions including bi-polar, hard hammer, soft hammer as well indirect percussion. Particularly, the study reveals backed pieces (n=203) are the most significant portion of the whole assemblages retaining unique technological features. The comparisons of Laga Oda backed pieces with other contemporaneous sites of Goda Buticha and Mochena Borago revealed both similarities and variations in technological and typological aspects of the LSA assemblage during the Middle and Late Holocene. The rock shelter and the eastern side of the rift escarpment may also have acted as a sporadic refugium during alternating warm and cool periods of the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS)-1.