Katherine M. Grillo

Pastoral Neolithic sites on the southern Mbulu Plateau, Tanzania

As part of a larger project examining the introduction of herding into northern Tanzania, surveys and excavations were conducted at the southern edge of the Mbulu Plateau, documenting the presence of Narosura ceramics dating to the early third millennium BP, as well as a Later Stone Age occupation dated via ostrich eggshell to the tenth millennium BP. This marks the southernmost extent of the Pastoral Neolithic in eastern Africa. The paucity of sites attributable to early herding in this area may be due to a lack of survey in landscapes likely to have been preferred by livestock owners and to extensive contemporary cultivation in those same areas. Links can be drawn between the study area and previously documented sites with Narosura materials near Lake Eyasi, and between the study area and obsidian sources in the Lake Naivasha area of the Rift Valley, making the plateau and its surroundings a potentially promising area for further research.

The context of early megalithic architecture in eastern Africa: the Turkana Basin c. 5000-4000 BP

Megalithic ‘pillar sites’ built by middle Holocene peoples of the Turkana Basin in northwestern Kenya provide eastern Africas earliest known example of monumental architecture. Radiometric dates place pillar site construction and use ~5000-4000 cal. BP. This social innovation occurred during a period of marked environmental and economic change: the level of Lake Turkana dropped dramatically, vast plains opened between the lake and neighbouring volcanic ridges and herding was added to the previous local subsistence repertoire of fishing, gathering and hunting. Material culture recovered from the pillar sites suggests that they supported diverse commemorative practices including, but not limited to, the mortuary sphere, and that they may have been built and used by multiple social groups.

New dates for Kansyore and pastoral neolithic ceramics in the Eyasi Basin, Tanzania

This paper presents and contextualizes two radiocarbon dates directly obtained from Kansyore and Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (Narosura) ceramic sherds from sites near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. The dates improve upon those obtained during prior research, which were compromised by problematic samples and stratigraphic disturbance. This underscores the importance of direct dating on diagnostic ceramics in areas with poor site integrity. The Eyasi Basin, often thought to mark a “southern frontier” for stone-using herders, is placed in a broader regional context in terms of material correlates of the spread of food production.

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.

The Materiality of Mobile Pastoralism: Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives from Samburu, Kenya

groups or a change in mortuary patterns over time. However, these differences did not affect the skeletal health of individuals. Adults from both cemeteries 3-J-10 and 3-J-11 demonstrate the same overall prevalence rates of skeletal stress and there is no significant difference in health between the two sites. The environmental and cultural stressors therefore equally affected the overall population at Mis Island, regardless of membership in specific sex or burial groups. A comparison of these results from sites in northern Nubia demonstrates that health in the remote farming community at Mis Island was particularly harsh, but remained relatively stable despite the larger political and social changes happening throughout the greater Nubian kingdoms.

Pastoral Neolithic Settlement at Luxmanda, Tanzania

ABSTRACT The later Holocene spread of pastoralism throughout eastern Africa profoundly changed socio-economic and natural landscapes. During the Pastoral Neolithic (ca. 5000–1200 B.P.), herders spread through southern Kenya and northern Tanzania—areas previously occupied only by hunter-gatherers—eventually developing the specialized forms of pastoralism that remain vital in this region today. Research on ancient pastoralism has been primarily restricted to rockshelters and special purpose sites. This paper presents results of surveys and excavations at Luxmanda, an open-air habitation site located farther south in Tanzania, and occupied many centuries earlier, than previously expected based upon prior models for the spread of herding. Technological and subsistence patterns demonstrate ties to northerly sites, suggesting that Luxmanda formed part of a network of early herders. The site is thus unlikely to stand alone, and further surveys are recommended to better understand the spread of herding into the region, and ultimately to southern Africa.

Organic technology in the Pastoral Neolithic: osseous and eggshell artefacts from Luxmanda, Tanzania

Hard animal materials were key components of prehistoric daily life, with many such raw materials shaped into diverse tool types and personal ornaments. With few exceptions, outside of the far south and north of Africa, osseous artefacts have been largely understudied on the continent, with this situation particularly applying to pastoralist contexts. Well-documented worked bone, ivory, or ostrich eggshell (OES) assemblages tend to be associated with hunter-gatherers and are generally interpreted with reference to contemporary hunter-gatherer toolkits. Study of osseous and OES technologies used by ancient or modern pastoralist populations, on the other hand, remains in its infancy. In this paper, we present an analysis of 14 worked bone, ivory, and OES artefacts from the Pastoral Neolithic site of Luxmanda located in north-central Tanzania. We apply technological trace analysis to understand histories of manufacture, use, and discard and compare our findings against the corpus of osseous and eggshell technologies recovered from terminal Pleistocene through Holocene sites of eastern Africa, providing a synthesis of this region for the first time. Finally, we explore the limited record for comparable technologies in recent pastoralist communities and argue that forager/food producer distinctions based on organic technologies are neither present nor meaningful based on current evidence.

Stone Cairns and Material Culture of the Middle to Late Holocene, Lake Turkana

A recent archival research project in the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) identified artifacts and human remains associated with the 1980 excavation of stone cairns and habitation areas on the west side of Lake Turkana. The presence of stone grave cairns across eastern Africa is common, but their cultural origins and construction times are enigmatic. This article presents the results of the archival project and contextualizes both the artifacts found and the unpublished research notes within the framework of evolving settlement patterns in eastern Africa during the middle to late Holocene. Despite the presence of numerous decorative features on ceramics and the recovery of many complete lithic tools, the material culture is generally non-diagnostic within existing typo-technological categories. The research indicates that there was tremendous diversity in the material culture of the Turkana Basin during the late Holocene.

Pastoralism in Africa: past, present and future

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