Benjamin Smith’s (MA Candidate, Anthropology) research focuses on the archaeology of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Many scholars believe that modern human behaviors evolved gradually, as adaptations to ecologically diverse and highly variable Pleistocene African landscapes. They posit that these behaviors left Africa as a “package” integral to the behavioral repertoire of dispersing human populations 70,000-50,000 years ago. One early component of the so-called “behavioral package” was ground stone technology, i.e. stone tools shaped by and used for pigment and food processing.
Benjamin is developing an MA alongside Dr. Steven Brandt (UF Department of Anthropology) that will describe a ground stone assemblage from the Mochena Borago Rockshelter. In December he will travel to Ethiopia to begin analyzing collections held at the National Museum in Addis Ababa. Then in February Benjamin will travel south with the Southwest Ethiopia Archaeological Project (SWEAP), directed by Dr. Brandt, to Sodo, the capital of the Wolayta zone, where they will continue excavations at Mochena Borago. He has received support for his research from the UF Department of Anthropology and Center for African Studies. Benjamin is also studying Amharic as a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) fellow.