Anthropological Models for a Reconstruction of the First African Frontier (E03)

• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2009 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 57444011

The concept of the "first African frontier" relates to movements of hunter-gatherers within and out of Africa. In the first two CRC-phases, the E3 project was focused on external constraints of hunter-gatherer mobility like ecological and political constraints. Based on previous fieldwork and agent-based modelling underlying principles of forager mobility in Africa will be investigated in terms of ‘decision-making’ and ‘cultural mapping’, i.e., the social understanding of landscape, highlighting internal cultural models of hunter-gatherer mobility as opposed to previously considered external ones.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 806: Our Way to Europe: Culture-Environment Interaction and Human Mobility in the Late Quaternary
• Applicant Institution: Universität zu Köln
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Michael Bollig; Professor Dr. Thomas Widlok