Mochena Borago Rockshelter, Ethiopia

Mochena Borago Rockshelter (MB, 6.897° N, 37.755° E) has played a pivotal role in recognizing ecologically rich-but hitherto poorly known-highland tropical SW Ethiopia as an important region for understanding Late Pleistocene and Holocene hunter-gatherer lifeways and population movements in and out of the Horn of Africa. Since 1995, international archaeological projects have made MB one of only a handful of sites in the Horn that preserves a chronometrically dated archaeological sequence spanning much of the last 50,000 years. Recent archaeological research at MB, reported here for the first time, indicates that human occupation of the shelter extends considerably beyond the effective limits of radiocarbon dating. Of primary importance, these preserved traces of human occupation offer a new opportunity to explore the behavioral evolution and “Out of Africa” dispersals of Homo sapiens across an extended sequence that may span late MIS 5, MIS 4, and/or early MIS 3. This includes testing the hypothesis that the diverse, relatively moist environments of tropical highland SW Ethiopia sustained hunter-gatherer populations during extended periods of aridity (e.g., MIS 4) when many other parts of eastern Africa, the Sahel, and Sahara experienced profound human depopulation. SW Ethiopia may have served as a source area for humans who subsequently dispersed during early MIS 3.