Archaeology in Eastern Africa: Recent Developments and More Dates

1984 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Robertshaw
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
East African ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Northern Tanzania ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Historical Sequences

Obsidian hydration dating has been successfully applied to East African archaeological sites. Chemical sourcing of obsidian artefacts has documented long-distance movement of obsidian from the Central Rift valley. A date in the ninth or eighth century b.c. has been obtained for iron objects in the Er Renk District of the Southern Sudan. Tentative culture-historical sequences are available from excavations around the Sudd and in the Lake Besaka region of Ethiopia. Archaeological research has begun in the interior of Somalia. In northern Kenya, claims that Namoratunga II is an archaeo-astronomical site have been challenged. Excavations at Mumba-Höhle and Nasera have shed new light on the transition from the Middle to Later Stone Age in northern Tanzania perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. Knowledge of the Elmenteitan Tradition has been considerably advanced by excavations in south-western Kenya. Iron-smelting furnaces with finger-decorated bricks have been discovered in south-eastern Kenya, though not yet dated. New dates falling in the last few centuries have caused first millennium a.d. dates obtained previously for Engaruka to be rejected. Excavations at several sites on the East African coast indicate that the beginnings of coastal occupation from the Lamu archipelago to Mozambique fall in the ninth century a.d. In Malawi the Shire Highlands seem to have been settled around the tenth century a.d. Investigations of large smelting-furnaces in central Malawi indicate that they were used as concentrators of poor-quality iron ore. Excavations in rock-shelters on the southern edge of the Copperbelt have produced a culture-historical sequence spanning the last 18,000 years. The western stream of the Early Iron Age was established in the Upper Zambezi valley by about the mid fifth century a.d.

The Early Iron Age in Zambia—Regional Variants and some Tentative Conclusions

1968 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Phillipson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Lake Tanganyika ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
East African ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
First Millennium

The Early Iron Age people appear to have been responsible for the introduction into Zambia of pot-making, metallurgy and, less certainly, food production. Recent research has greatly increased the known number of Early Iron Age sites in Zambia and a number of regional variants have been defined, based largely on the typology of the associated pottery. Radiocarbon dates suggest that these groups are all to be dated to the first millennium a.d. and that they are contemporary with, and related to, the earliest known Iron Age in Rhodesia and some East African sites. It is suggested that the Early Iron Age people slowly spread into eastern Africa from an area west of Lake Tanganyika during the first few centuries a.d. Some related sites are known from this westerly region. This hypothesis can be compared with Oliver's interpretation of Guthrie's linguistic evidence; but the use of archaeological and linguistic arguments together is impossible until proof is available that the Early Iron Age people spoke Bantu languages.

Edges and interactions beyond Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells ◽  
Naoise Mac Sweeney
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The North Atlantic

Iron Age Europe, once studied as a relatively closed, coherent continent, is being seen increasingly as a dynamic part of the much larger, interconnected world. Interactions, direct and indirect, with communities in Asia, Africa, and, by the end of the first millennium AD, North America, had significant effects on the peoples of Iron Age Europe. In the Near East and Egypt, and much later in the North Atlantic, the interactions can be linked directly to historically documented peoples and their rulers, while in temperate Europe the evidence is exclusively archaeological until the very end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The evidence attests to often long-distance interactions and their effects in regard to the movement of peoples, and the introduction into Europe of raw materials, crafted objects, styles, motifs, and cultural practices, as well as the ideas that accompanied them.

Trade and society on the south-east African coast in the later first millennium AD: the case of Chibuene

Antiquity ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (333) ◽  
pp. 723-737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sinclair ◽  
Anneli Ekblom ◽  
Marilee Wood
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
The South ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Beach Site

The south-east coast of Africa in the later first millennium was busy with boats and the movement of goods from across the Indian Ocean to the interior. The landing places were crucial mediators in this process, in Africa as elsewhere. Investigations at the beach site of Chibuene show that a local community was supplying imported beads to such interior sites as Schroda, with the consequent emergence there of hierarchical power structures.

Recovering and Remembering a Slave Route in Central Tanzania

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Wynne-Jones
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Development Cooperation ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Practical Nature ◽  
International Development Cooperation

Tanzania's central caravan route, joining Lake Tanganyika to the East African coast, was an important artery of trade, with traffic peaking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and associated particularly with ivory, but also with the export of slaves. The central caravan route has recently been chosen as a focus for the memorialisation of the slave trade in eastern Africa, as part of a project headed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in collaboration with the Antiquities Division of Tanzania, and in response to a wider UNESCO-sponsored agenda. Yet the attempt to memorialise slavery along this route brings substantial challenges, both of a practical nature and in the ways that we think about material remains. This chapter explores some of these challenges in the context of existing heritage infrastructure, archaeologies of slavery, and the development of the region for tourism. It highlights the need for a more nuanced archaeology of this route's slave heritage.

Recent archaeological research and radiocarbon dates from Eastern Africa

1981 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gadi G. Y. Mgomezulu
Keyword(s):  
Rift Valley ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Northern Tanzania ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Early Pottery ◽  
North Western ◽  
Central Kenya

Research over the past five years or so indicates that in north-western and central Kenya and northern Tanzania pastoralism is much older than previously supposed. Radiocarbon dates from the central Rift valley and the Serengeti plains suggest the presence of domestic cattle by about the sixth millennium b.c. Early pottery traditions in the central Rift valley and around Lake Turkana have been more precisely identified. A continuing research project in the southern Sudan has revealed early pottery with possible northern affinities and rouletted pottery of the first as well as second millennia a.d. In north-western Tanzania, iron would still seem to have been smelted as early as the sixth century b.c. The use of iron, and perhaps of rouletted ware, by pastoral peoples in central Kenya is now dated to the late first millennium a.d. In Malawi, food-production would still seem to have been introduced early in that millennium, but the introduction of cattle has now been dated to the third or fourth century a.d., some centuries earlier than had previously been supposed. In Zambia, the surprisingly early dates for Situmpa pottery have apparently been confirmed. On the east coast, excavations at Hafun, Mogadishu and Manda have enabled more precise dating of the periods during which these ancient ports flourished, while a comprehensive survey programme has refined our knowledge of monumental sites along the Kenya coast.

Ulster and the Indian Ocean? Recent maritime archaeological research on the East African coast

Antiquity ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (290) ◽  
pp. 797-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Breen ◽  
Wes Forsythe ◽  
Paul Lane ◽  
Tom McErlean ◽  
Rosemary McConkey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Maritime Archaeology ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Kenyan Coast

In January 2001, a team of researchers from the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland) conducted an innovative maritime archaeology project on the East African coast in partnership with the British Institute in Eastern Africa and the National Museums of Kenya. Its focus was Mombasa Island on the southern Kenyan coast, a historical settlement and port for nearly 2000 years (Berg 1968; Sassoon 1980; 1982). The East African seaboard, stretching from Somalia in the north to Madagascar and Mozambique in the south, was culturally dynamic throughout the historical period. This area, traditionally known as the Swahili coast, is culturally defined as a maritime zone extending 2000 km from north to south, but reaching a mere 15 hi inland. The origins of ‘Swahili’ cultural identity originated during the middle of the 1st millennium AD, following consolidation of earlier farming and metalusing Bantu-speaking communities along the coast and emergence of a distinctive ‘maritime’ orientation and set of cultural traditions (eg Allen 1993; Chami 1998; Helm 2000; Horton & Middelton 2000). Previous research produced evidence of exploitation of marine resources for food and an early engagement in longdistance exchange networks, linking parts ofthis coast with the Classical world by at least the BC/AD transition.

The transition to farming in eastern Africa: new faunal and dating evidence from Wadh Lang'o and Usenge, Kenya

Antiquity ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (311) ◽  
pp. 62-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lane ◽  
Ceri Ashley ◽  
Oula Seitsonen ◽  
Paul Harvey ◽  
Sada Mire ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
East African ◽  
Regional Variations ◽  
African People ◽  
Exploratory Investigation

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.

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