Ceri Ashley

The Transition to Farming in Eastern Africa: New Faunal and Dating Evidence from Wadh Lang'o and Usenge, Kenya

The exploratory investigation of two sites in Kenya throws new light on the transition from a ‘stone age’ to an ‘iron age’. The model of widespread cultural replacement by Bantu-speaking iron producers is questioned and instead the authors propose a long interaction with regional variations. In matters of lithics, ceramics, hunting, gathering, husbandry and cooking, East African people created local and eclectic packages of change between 1500BC and AD500.

New Dates for Kansyore and Urewe Wares from Northern Nyanza, Kenya

Since 1999, the British Institute in Eastern Africa has been conducting periodic surveys and excavations in northern Nyanza Province, Kenya under the overall direction of Paul Lane. The aims of this fieldwork have been as follows: 1) to expand current knowledge of the distribution of midto late Holocene archaeological sites in the survey areas, up to and including historic Luo settlements; 2) to improve current dating of Kansyore, Urewe and so-called Middle Iron Age (MIA) occupation phases; and 3) to refine current understanding of the transition from purely hunting, gathering and fishing subsistence strategies to ones based, at least in part, on farming and/or herding (cf. Lane, 2004). Survey work thus far has been concentrated in two localities: i) the area around Lake Saru and Usenge village, Bondo District and ii) the north-eastern portion of the Uyoma Peninsula and around Asembo Bay, also in Bondo District. Briefer surveys have also been conducted along stretches of the Yala River, especially downstream from the known Urewe sites near Yala Bridge (see Leakey, et al. 1948; Soper, 1969), and close to the shores of Victoria Nyanza to the west of Kisumu, where ephemeral traces of Kansyore, Urewe and MJA activity and Entebbe ceramics have been found (Fig. 1). The purpose of this note is to report briefly on the sites with Kansyore, Urewe and/or ‘Middle Iron Age’ (MIA) ceramics that have been located thus far, with particular reference to those that have been excavated and for which radiocarbon dates are now available. Full excavation reports will be published in due course, while a longer discussion of the faunal and artefactual evidence associated with the transition to farming in the broader area appears elsewhere (Lane etal., in press).

Archaeology on Lolui Island, Uganda 1964-5

The archaeological significance of Lolui was first realized by Mary Leakey when she briefly visited the island in 1953 and made a large collection of Dimple-based pottery (since renamed Urewe ware), including a large number of reconstructable vessels. Rock paintings were later discovered by Hinchliffe and Neal and described by Posnansky (1961), who also made a small collection of pottery from the south-western promontory. In 1964, Gartlan found more Urewe ware, rock paintings, engravings and piled stone cairns and his discoveries were followed up by Jackson who also recognized the presence of rock gongs, with these various discoveries being subsequently described (Jackson et al. 1965). Following these discoveries, a major expedition was organized in December 1964 with the aim of surveying as much of the island as possible and describing the extent of the various types of field monuments and the density of former settlement. A sequence of human settlement was proposed in the light of the then current knowledge of East Africa’s prehistory and against the ecological and physical background which was being studied

Archaeological ceramics from eastern Africa : past approaches and future directions

Ceramics are an essential part of the Holocene archaeology of eastern Africa and the development of increasingly complex typologies has rightly played a key role in our understanding of chronology and social identity. However, this focus on taxonomies can also be restrictive, as we lose sight of the communities who made and used the ceramics in our endless search to classify and re-classify ceramics. Focusing on ceramics from the Great Lakes and Rift Valley (Kansyore, Pastoral Neolithic and Urewe), we critique past approaches to ceramic analysis, and suggest future studies should better recognise their social role. We end with a case study of Kansyore ceramics, emphasising function and use.

Mobility and African archaeology: an introduction

Ceri Z. Ashley, Alexander Antonites and Per Ditlef Fredriksen Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria, Faculty of Humanities, Private Bag X20, Hatfield, Pretoria, 0028, South Africa; Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, PO Box 1019, N-0315 Oslo, Norway; Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch, 7701 South Africa

A reconsideration of the figures from Luzira

Despite the attested power and impact of the Luzira Head, one of the very few examples of precolonial figurative ceramics from the Great Lakes region, the eponymous head and associated body fragments are almost totally unknown to the Ugandan public and the international archaeological/art historical communities alike. In the light of recent archaeological work conducted in Buganda, and supported by the BIEA (see Reid 2003), it is now possible to assign an earlier and much more precise date for this material (Reid and Ashley 2008), and to place it within a fuller and more culturally textured archaeological framework. Of particular importance is the detailed examination of the figures and related material, a reconsideration that has been overdue since their initial publication by Wayland etal. (1933). This is relevant as much contextual information has been lost since the discovery of the collection in 1929, and only the artefacts themselves remain as an interpretive resource. While the suggestions made here must necessarily be tentative and are restricted by the available data, this paper will hopefully serve as a platform for future research and interpretation as archaeological understanding of the region grows.

A context for the Luzira Head

The Luzira head, a pottery figure discovered in a Ugandan prison compound in 1929, has remained curiously anonymous ever since. New archaeological work on the northern shores of (Lake) Victoria Nyanza has defined a formative period of political centralisation at the end of the first millennium AD. The authors show that this period of early to late Iron Age transition is where this remarkable object and related figurative material belongs. This has implications both for the formation of kingdoms in Uganda and for the story of African art more generally.

(Re)making Landscape and Place: An Archaeology of the Lake Ngami Mission (1893–96), Khwebe Hills, Botswana

Nineteenth-century missionaries to southern Africa sought materially to remake and reshape the peoples and places they encountered according to notions of virtuous living, correct behaviour and Christian morality. This article explores attitudes to landscape and place in a short-lived London Missionary Society mission in the Khwebe Hills of Ngamiland, Botswana, which was occupied between 1893 and 1896. Combining archaeological evidence with archival records, the article will examine the factors that shaped Alfred Wookey’s approach to this new landscape, and how he tried to create a utopian settlement in the Khwebe Hills, far from the corrupting dangers of the Batawana town, or the threat to health of Lake Ngami. The failure of the mission after just three years can be seen as a result of this isolation, both in terms of the struggle for survival and as a political strategy by the Batawana Kgosi Sekgoma Letsholathebe to ostracise the mission politically.

The mobilities turn and archaeology: new perspectives on socio-political complexity in thirteenth-century northern South Africa

ABSTRACT This paper applies insights from the ‘mobilities turn’ (Hannam et al. 2006) or ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006) to the archaeology of social complexity in thirteenth-century southern Africa. To date, research on this topic has typically tended to emphasise the role of mooring and place, with movement only regarded parenthetically. In contrast, the mobilities turn views mobility as a fundamental way of existing in the world, whereby movement, as well as stillness, are practices imbued with representation and meaning. This interpretive frame is brought to bear on new research conducted on a concentration of sites in the Maremani Nature Reserve, as well as previously published material from the sites of Stayt and Mutamba, South Africa. Our results illustrate the manner in which political power intersects with the mobility of people, objects and ideas and show how the mobility of people and things was active in the creation of communities at multiple spatial and conceptual scales. The diverse communities that occupied the Middle River Limpopo Valley were co-constituted within a complex network in which peripheral sites played an important role in maintaining political centres. The paper explores how communities articulated with the ‘imagined’ community of Mapungubwe through shared practices and material culture.