Yonatan Sahle is a Senior Lecturer in the department. He received a PhD in archaeology from UCT and was a postdoctoral fellow at The University of California (Berkeley). He worked as a research-group leader at the University of Tübingen (Germany) before taking up his current position in 2020.

Sahle is a broadly trained archaeologist with extensive field experience and research interests that span lithic analysis, hominin carnivory, Stone Age weaponry, and ethnoarchaeology. His current research primarily seeks to understand the patterns and contexts of hominin behavioural change across the Middle Pleistocene.

To comprehensively understand these aspects, he leads a collaborative field research project in newly discovered hominin-bearing localities of Ethiopia’s Afar Rift, where his team investigates the evolution of hominin behaviour, paleobiology and environmental contexts across the emergence of our species.

Dept. of Archaeology, Beattie Bldg., Room 3.17
Fax: +27 (0)21 650 2352

Courses Lectured

• AGE3013H - Archaeology in Practice
• AGE3006H: Directed Reading

Course Convener

• AGE2012F - The First People
• AGE4000W: Archaeology Honours

Publications

Sahle Y, Firew GA, Pearson OM, Stynder DD, Beyin A (2024).MIS 3 innovative behavior and highland occupation during a stable wet episode in the Lake Tana paleoclimate record, Ethiopia.Scientific Reports, 14(1), p17038.

Sahle Y, Ahmed S, Dira SJ (2023).Javelin use among Ethiopias's last indigenous hunters: Variability and further constraints on tip cross-sectional geometry.Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 70, p.101505.

Sahle Y (2022). Exhibition Review: The Origins of Early Sapiens Behaviour: Origins Centre, University of the Witwatersand, Johannesburg. Antiquity, 96(385), pp.238-241.

Niespolo EM, WoldeGabriel G, Hart WK, Renne PR, Sharp WD, Shackley MS, Ambrose SH, Asfaw B, Beyene Y, Brasil MF, Carlson JP, Sahle Y, White TD (2021). Integrative geochronology calibrates the Middle and Late Stone Ages of Ethiopia’s Afar Rift. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(50), e2116329118

Ashkenazy H, Sahle Y (2021). An Early Holocene Lithic Assemblage from Dibé Rockshelter, South-Central Ethiopia. Journal of African Archaeology 19(1), 57–71

Sahle Y (2020). Eastern African Stone Age. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. USA: Oxford University Press

Oppenheimer C, Khalidi L, Gratuze B, Iverson N, Lane C, Vidal C, Sahle Y, et al. (2019). Risk and reward: explosive eruptions and obsidian lithic resource at Nabro volcano (Eritrea). Quaternary Science Reviews 226, 105995

Sahle Y, Gossa T (2019). More data needed for claims about the earliest Oldowan artifacts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (41), 20259–20260

Sahle Y, Giusti D, Tourloukis V (2019). Newly discovered Middle Pleistocene hominid-bearing deposits from the Lower Awash basin, Ethiopia. Anthropological Science 127(3), 141–147

Sahle Y, Giusti D, Gossa T, Ashkenazy H (2019). Exploring karst landscapes: New prehistoric sites in south-central Ethiopia. Antiquity 93, 1–6

Sahle Y, Brooks AS (2019). Assessment of complex projectiles in the early Late Pleistocene at Aduma, Ethiopia. PLoS ONE 14(5), e0216716 

Sahle Y (2019). Ethnoarchaeology of compound adhesive production and tool hafting: implications from Hadiya (Ethiopia). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 53, 43–50

Sahle Y, Reyes-Centeno H, Bentz C [Eds.] (2019). Modern human origins and dispersal. Tübingen: Kerns Verlag

Sahle Y, Reyes-Centeno H, Bentz C (2018). Modern human origins and dispersal: current state of knowledge and future directions. Evolutionary Anthropology 27, 64–67

Sahle Y, Braun DR (2018). A reply to Douze and Delagnes’s ‘The pattern of emergence of a Middle Stone Age tradition at Gademotta and Kulkuletti (Ethiopia) through convergent tool and point technologies’. Journal of Human Evolution 125, 201–206

Sahle Y, El Zaatari S, White TD (2017). Hominid butchers and biting crocodiles: Equifinality in Plio-Pleistocene bone modification. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(50), 13164–13169

Shackley M, Sahle Y (2017). Geochemical provenance of obsidian artifacts from the early Middle Stone Age of Gademotta, Main Ethiopian Rift. Geoarchaeology 32, 302–310

Sahle Y, Beyin A (2017). Archaeological reconnaissance of the Late Pleistocene Red Sea coast in the Danakil (Afar, Ethiopia). Antiquity 91, 1-6

Sahle Y, Negash A (2016). An ethnographic experiment of endscraper curation rate among Hadiya hideworkers, Ethiopia. Lithic Technology 41, 154–163

Sahle Y, Morgan LE, Braun DR, Atnafu B, Hutchings WK (2014). Chronological and behavioral contexts of the earliest Middle Stone Age in the Gademotta Formation, Main Ethiopian Rift. Quaternary International 331, 6–19

Sahle Y, Hutchings WK, Braun DR, Sealy JC, Morgan LE, Negash A, Atnafu B (2013). Earliest stone-tipped projectiles from the Ethiopian Rift date to >279,000 years ago. PLoS ONE 8(11), e78092. 

Sahle Y, Negash A, and Braun DR (2012). Variability in ethnographic hidescraper use among the Hadiya of Ethiopia: Implications for reduction analysis. African Archaeological Review 29(4), 383–397

Gossa T, Sahle Y, Negash A (2012). A reassessment of the Middle and Later Stone Age lithic assemblages from Aladi Springs, southern Afar Rift, Ethiopia. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 47(2), 210–22

González-Ruibal A, Sahle Y, Ayán Vila X (2011). A social archaeology of colonial war in Ethiopia. World Archaeology 43(1), 40–65