ARIMAS - ARId environments and Modern humans’ Adaptation Strategies

• Applicant: Matthias Blessing
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522458510

The ARIMAS project is planned as a long-term project that aims for a detailed reconstruction of landscape use and organization of homo sapiens throughout the Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA) in an arid microregion. The intended area of study, Arimas Farm, is situated in the southern Karas mountains in the Karas region in southwestern Namibia. Arimas is characterized by dried up ravines enclosed by steep dolomite walls with intrusive quartzite. Arimas is the neighbouring farm to Uitsig on which the archaeological site Apollo 11 is situated. Apollo 11 yielded, similar to the site Pockenbank which is situated about 100 km to the west, one of the longest MSA and LSA stratigraphies in the larger region. Apollo 11 is especially known for its painted stone slabs which were recovered from MSA horizons dating to 27000 BP. As such, they represent the oldest known figurative art from southern Africa. Despite the close vicinity to Apollo 11 and the comparably extensive survey work undertaken in its surroundings, Arimas Farm was never subject of a systematic archaeological survey, if any at all. This was the starting point for my colleague Dr. Aurore Val and myself to conduct a short survey on Arimas in May 2021, in order to assess the farm's archaeological potential. During our 8-day survey, we were able to cover two large ravines which represent about 25% of the farms area (excluding the flat tops of the surrounding mountains) and mapped all archaeological sites in that area. In total, we discovered 29 archaeological sites, mostly caves or rockshelters. 10 of these had rock art on the walls or ceilings. A shelter with seven handprints in red colour on the ceiling is the most spectacular finding of our survey. The wider parts of the ravines are characterized by large open-air lithic scatters. Without further context age estimates can only be given very roughly. The large Levallois component in the open-air scatters points towards older phases of the MSA. The artefacts on the floors of caves and shelters showed a mix of typical MSA and LSA forms. While we were unable to securely identify figurative rock art, it needs to be pointed out that the colours on the shelter and cave walls are heavily bleached most of the time which obviously hampers identification of forms of any kind. Based on the findings of our survey, we can describe the archaeological potential of the farm as high and a continuation of the survey accompanied by initial test excavations is highly desirable. A complete map of the farm's archaeology alongside an assessment of the potential for longer stratigraphies to be preserved at selected sites would form the basis of further research on Arimas farm and the project proposed here is sought to generate this baseline data. Given the heavy bleaching of the paintings the project also has a conservatory aspect which is to document the preserved rock art before it is going to be lost to time.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: USA
• Participating Institution: University of Connecticut; Department of Anthropology
• Host: Professor Christian Tryon, Ph.D.