Carmel Schrire

Landscape archaeology, a sub-discipline of archaeology and archaeological theory, is the study of the ways in which people in the past constructed and used the environment around them. It is also known as archaeogeography. Landscape archaeology is inherently multidisciplinary in its approach to the study of culture, and is used by pre-historical, classic, and historic archaeologists. The key feature that distinguishes landscape archaeology from other archaeological approaches to sites is that there is an explicit emphasis on the sites' relationships between material culture, human alteration of land/cultural modifications to landscape, and the natural environment. The study of landscape archaeology has evolved to include how landscapes were used to create and reinforce social inequality and to announce one's social status to the community at large. The field includes with the dynamics of geohistorical objects, such as roads, walls, boundaries, trees, and land divisions.

Ivor Noël Hume, OBE was a British-born archaeologist who did research in the United States. A former director of Colonial Williamsburg’s archaeological research program and the author of more than 20 books, he was heralded by his peers as the "father of historical archaeology".

Dirk Jansz Smient was governor of Mauritius in the new settlement at Grand Port from 1666 to 1669, when he returned to Cape of Good Hope. He was replaced by George Frederik Wreede. In November 1676 he led a punitive expedition from Cape Town to a group of Hottentots led by Chief Goenema, which failed as they could not be located.

Hilary John Deacon was a South African archaeologist and academic. He was professor of archaeology at the University of Stellenbosch in Stellenbosch, South Africa. His research focused on the emergence of modern humans and African archaeology. He was principal researcher at the Klasies River Caves, one of the oldest known sites of anatomically modern humans, who lived there circa 125,000 years ago.

Janette Deacon is a South African archaeologist specialising in heritage management and rock art conservation. She has studied the changes in stone tools from sites in the southern Cape in relation to climate change over the past 20,000 years. From 1985, she located rock engravings at places where the /Xam informants of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd lived in the nineteenth century. She served as a member of the SAHRA Council and was first chairperson of Heritage Western Cape.

Wildebeest Kuil Rock Art Centre is a rock engraving site with visitor centre on land owned by the !Xun and Khwe San situated about 16 km from Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa. It is a declared Provincial Heritage Site managed by the Northern Cape Rock Art Trust in association with the McGregor Museum. The engravings exemplify one of the forms often referred to as ‘Bushman rock art' – or Khoe-San rock art – with the rock paintings of the Drakensberg, Cederberg and other regions of South Africa being generally better known occurrences. Differing in technique, the engravings have many features in common with rock paintings. A greater emphasis on large mammals such as elephant, rhino and hippo, in addition to eland, and an often reduced concern with depicting the human form set the engravings apart from the paintings of the sub-continent.

Wonderwerk Cave is an archaeological site, formed originally as an ancient solution cavity in dolomite rocks of the Kuruman Hills, situated between Danielskuil and Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. It is a National Heritage Site, managed as a satellite of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley. Geologically, hillside erosion exposed the northern end of the cavity, which extends horizontally for about 140 m (460 ft) into the base of a hill. Accumulated deposits inside the cave, up to 7 m (23 ft) in-depth, reflect natural sedimentation processes such as water and wind deposition as well as the activities of animals, birds, and human ancestors over some 2 million years. The site has been studied and excavated by archaeologists since the 1940s and research here generates important insights into human history in the subcontinent of Southern Africa. Evidence within Wonderwerk cave has been called the oldest controlled fire. Wonderwerk means "miracle" in the Afrikaans language.

The South African Archaeological Society was founded in 1945 to promote public awareness of archaeology and its findings in southern Africa, facilitating interaction between professional archaeologists and people with a lay interest in the subject. The society, through its branches, organizes regular lectures and excursions, and, since its inception, has been responsible for publications including a professional journal and a range of newsletters of a more popular nature at national and branch levels. Informally the society is known as "ArchSoc".

Karim Sadr is an archaeologist contributing to research in southern Africa. He is the author of over 60 academic articles, a book and two edited volumes. While Sadr has contributed to the Kalahari Debate, his more recent work has focused on historical revision, re-examining the acquisition of domesticated animals and pottery in southern Africa by Hunter-gatherer. His work is reintroducing the term Neolithic back into southern African archaeological discourse from which it had previously been removed.

Lyn Wadley is an honorary professor of archaeology, and also affiliated jointly with the Archaeology Department and the Institute for Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Judith Sealy is a Professor and South Africa Research Chairs Initiative Research Chair in Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies and director of the Stable Light Isotope Lab in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town.

Patricia Joan Vinnicombe was a South African archaeologist and artist, known for identifying and copying San rock paintings in the valleys and foothills of the Drakensberg. Her work transformed the study of rock art into a science. She was also active in the preservation of Aboriginal art in Western Australia.

Elands Bay Cave is located near the mouth of the Verlorenvlei estuary on the Atlantic coast of South Africa's Western Cape Province. The climate has continuously become drier since the habitation of hunter-gatherers in the Later Pleistocene. The archaeological remains recovered from previous excavations at Elands Bay Cave have been studied to help answer questions regarding the relationship of people and their landscape, the role of climate change that could have determined or influenced subsistence changes, and the impact of pastoralism and agriculture on hunter-gatherer communities.

John Parkington is an Emeritus professor in archaeology and hunter-gatherers, Paleoenvironmental reconstruction and human ecology, prehistoric art, and coastal archaeology. He has suggested that since fish provide an important nutrient for the brain, the consumption of fish led to the emergence of the first really intelligent humans in the Western Cape region of South Africa. In February 2000 South African President Thabo Mbeki mentioned the letter he had received from Parkington, regarding the protection of archaeological heritage sites, in his address at the opening of South Africa's Parliament.

Boomplaas Cave is located in the Cango Valley in the foothills of the Swartberg mountain range, north of Oudtshoorn, Eden District Municipality in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. It has a 5 m (16 ft) deep stratified archaeological sequence of human presence, occupation and hunter-gatherer/herder acculturation dating back 80,000 years. The site's documentation contributed to the reconstruction of palaeo-environments in the context of changes in climate within periods of the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. The cave has served multiple functions during its occupation, such as a kraal (enclosure) for animals, a place for the storage of oil rich fruits and as a hunting camp. Circular stone hearths and calcified dung remains of domesticated sheep as well as stone adzes and pottery art were excavated indicating that humans lived at the site and kept animals.

Ifri Oudadane is an archaeological site in the northeastern Rif region of Morocco. It is located on the southwestern coast of the Cape Three Forks on the Mediterranean Sea, and is one of the most important sites in the northwestern Maghreb region of Africa. Discovered during road construction, the site consists of a fairly large rock shelter above the modern coastline, the site has been excavated since 2006 by a team of Moroccan and German archaeologists. Although much is known about the transition of humans from hunter gatherer groups to food production in Europe and the Middle East, much of North Africa has not been researched. Ifri Oudadane is one of the first of such sites in North Africa. Dated to between 11000 and 5700 years BP, the site contains evidence that documents the shift of local inhabitants from hunter-gatherer groups to food producers. Such elements of change found at Ifri Oudadane include evidence of animal husbandry, domestication of legumes, and decoration of pottery. The site is known to contain the earliest dated crop in Northern Africa, a lentil.

Theresa A. Singleton is an American archaeologist and writer who focuses on the archaeology of African Americans, the African diaspora, and slavery in the United States. She is a leading archaeologist applying comparative approaches to the study of slavery in the Americas. Singleton has been involved in the excavation of slave residences in the southern United States and in the Caribbean. She is a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University, and serves as a curator for the National Museum of Natural History.