Sibel B. Kusimba

East African Archaeology: Foragers, Potters, Smiths, and Traders

Figures and Tables Preface 1. Comparing Prehistoric and Historic Hunter-Gatherer Mobility in Southern Kenya 2. The East African Neolithic: A Historical Perspective 3. Archaeological Implications of Hadzabe Forager Land Use in the Eyasi Basin, Tanzania 4. Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology: Some Examples from Kenya 5. Fipa Iron Technologies and Their Implied Social History 6. Early Ironworking Communities on the East African Coast: Excavations at Kivinja, Tanzania 7. Ironworking on the Swahili Coast of Kenya 8. Iron Age Settlement Patterns and Economic Change on Zanzibar and Pemba Islands 9. Politics, Cattle, and Conservation: Ngorongoro Crater at a Crossroads 10. Explaining the Origins of the State in East Africa 11. East African Archaeology: A South African Perspective References Contributors Index

The Development and Collapse of Precolonial Ethnic Mosaics in Tsavo, Kenya

Archaeologists and historians have long believed that little interaction existed between Iron Age cities of the Kenya Coast and their rural hinterlands. Ongoing archaeological and anthropological research in Tsavo, Southeast Kenya, shows that Tsavo has been continuously inhabited at least since the early Holocene. Tsavo peoples made a living by foraging, herding, farming, and producing pottery and iron, and in the Iron Age were linked to global markets via coastal traders. They were at one point important suppliers of ivory destined for Southwest and South Asia. Our excavations document forager and agropastoralist habitation sites, iron smelting and iron working sites, fortified rockshelters, and mortuary sites. We discuss the relationship between fortified rockshelters, in particular, and slave trade.

Intensification and Protohistoric Agropastoral Systems in East Africa

Agricultural systems can become complex in many different ways; nor do they necessarily intensify. In local histories, people employ varying agricultural strategies over time. In East Africa, the archaeological and ethnographic records demonstrate considerable variation in the use of extensive and intensive agricultural methods. After defining our terms, we will review some African examples of intensive agricultural systems and their comparative value in studying intensification. We will present an archaeological and ethnographic example of intensive agropastoral production from Mount Kasigau in the Taita Hills of southwestern Kenya.

AFRICA, EAST | Foragers

This article reviews major issues and evidence related to hunter-gatherers in East Africa, including archaeological sites of the Middle and Later Stone Age and the archaeological record of the transition to food production. The relevance of the ethnographic record to our understanding of ancient hunter-gatherers is also discussed.