User:Kipepeo15/Mochena Borago

Mochena Borago is a rockshelter and archaeological site situated on the western slope of Mount Damota, nearest to the town of Wolaita Sodo in Ethiopia, located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region. The site is well-dated, with 59 radiocarbon dates, which gives it one of the most secure chronologies among Late Pleistocene sites in the Horn of Africa, and Eastern Africa. It is one of only a few African sites found with intact deposits dating to Marine Isotope Stage 3 outside of South Africa, and was potentially a refugium for hunter-gatherering peoples during the cold and arid period of Marine Isotope Stage 4. This makes it an important research site for testing the "refugium theory," which states that over the past 70,000 years, during cold, arid conditions, like those of the Last Glacial Maximum and Marine Isotope Stage 4, humans sought refuge in the mountains of the southwest Ethiopian Highlands, which received higher rainfall, making them more habitable than the surrounding areas. Research at Mochena Borago is helping to reconstruct human behavior during the Late Pleistocene, and the paleoenvironment that Homo sapiens would have inhabited at this time in the Horn of Africa.

Ecology
Mount Damota, which is a trachytic volcano, is currently dormant, and rises 2908 meters above sea level at its summit. It was last active from around 2.94 million years ago to the Late Quaternary. Damota touches the administrative capital of the Wolaita Zone, Sodo, at its southern foot, and it lies between the Southwest Ethiopian Highlands and the Ethiopian Rift Valley from west to east, and between the central Rift Valley lakes and Bilate River from north to south. The rockshelter itself is about 70 m wide, 12 m high, and around 20 m from the east wall to the waterfall located at the mouth of the site to the west. The waterfall comes from a ravine that runs down Mount Damota and over Mochena Borago. The rainy season on Damota runs from June to September, during which half of annual rainfall, 2000 mm, falls.

History
Mochena Borago gets its name from a prominent historical figure in the Wolaita region, an advisor to the last king, T'ona: Moche Borago. The first researchers at the site had written its name as "Moche Borago," but local people and official records say that the name is actually "Mochena Borago."

Archaeology
Archaeology at Mochena Borago began in 1995 with survey work done under the direction of French archaeologist Roger Joussaume with the Groupe pour l’Etude de la Protohistoire de la Corne de l’Afrique (GEPCA), a group most interested in the mid- to Late Holocene deposits at the site. Excavations were carried out by GEPCA from 1998 to 2001 in the Holocene layers and some of the Late Pleistocene deposits. Xavier Gutherz directed a project at the site from 2000-2002 that focused on recovering evidence for food production during the Holocene occupations. The about 20 m^2 that Gutherz excavated were located along the northern section of the rockshelter, and have come to be called the "Block Excavation Area" or (BXA).

Artifacts
Artifacts found at Mochena Borago span a timeframe of 53,000 BP to 1,480 BP.