Holocene hunter-fisher-gatherer communities: new perspectives on Kansyore Using communities of Western Kenya

Dale, Darla; Ashley, Ceri

doi:10.1080/00672700903291716

Cited by 57 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Regionally, evidence suggests that some pre-pastoral LSA foragers engaged in moderate delayed-return subsistence strategies (Dale and Ashley, 2010), and fire was quite possibly used in Amboseli as a tool for landscape management from an early time. Contemporary hunter-gatherers in southern Africa are known to strategically burn grasslands (Lee, 1979), for example, as periodic burning in savannah environments serves to reduce and break up homogenous bush cover, promoting the productivity and diversity of biomes (Butz, 2009;Bond and Parr, 2010;Kamau and Medley, 2014).…”

Section: Livelihood Strategies In Amboseli From the Mid Holocenementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Little is known about LSA hunter-gatherer plant use in east Africa, but ethnographic analogies suggest people would have been consuming, tending, and transplanting wild plants to varying degrees (Marshall, 2001;Marlowe and Berbesque, 2009). On the shores of Lake Turkana and Lake Victoria, hunter-fisher-gatherer peoples also intensively exploited lacustrine resources including fish and shellfish (Robbins, 1972;Lane et al, 2006Lane et al, , 2007Dale and Ashley, 2010;Prendergast and Lane, 2010;Prendergast and Beyin, in press). …”

Section: Livelihood Strategies In Amboseli From the Mid Holocenementioning

confidence: 99%

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Pollen, People and Place: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Ecosystem Change at Amboseli, Kenya

et al. 2018

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This study presents a multidisciplinary perspective for understanding environmental change and emerging socio-ecological interactions across the Amboseli region of southwestern Kenya. We focus on late Holocene (<5,000 cal yr. BP) changes and continuities reconstructed from sedimentary, archeological, historical records and socio-ecological models. We utilize multi-disciplinary approaches to understand environmental-ecosystem-social interactions over the longue durée and use this to simulate different land use scenarios supporting conservation and sustainable livelihoods using a socio-ecological model. Today the semi-arid Amboseli landscape supports a large livestock and wildlife population, sustained by a wide variety of plants and extensive rangelands regulated by seasonal rainfall and human activity. Our data provide insight into how large-scale and long-term interactions of climate, people, livestock, wildlife and external connections have shaped the ecosystems across the Amboseli landscape. Environmental conditions were dry between ∼5,000 and 2,000 cal yr. BP, followed by two wet periods at ∼2,100-1,500 and 1,400-800 cal yr. BP with short dry periods; the most recent centuries were characterized by variable climate with alternative dry and wet phases with high spatial heterogeneity. Most evident in paleo and historical records is the changing woody to grass cover ratio, driven by changes in climate and fire regimes entwined with fluctuating elephant, cattle and wild ungulate populations moderated by human activity, including elephant ivory trade intensification. Archeological perspectives on the occupation of different groups (hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and farmers) in Amboseli region and the relationships between them are discussed. An overview of the known history of humans and elephants, expanding networks of trade, and the arrival and integration of metallurgy, livestock and domesticated crops in the wider region is provided. In recent decades, increased runoff and flooding have resulted in the expansion of wetlands and a reduction of woody vegetation, compounding problems created by increased enclosure and privatization of these landscapes. However, most Githumbi et al.Long-Term Multidisciplinary Perspectives at Amboseli, Kenya of the wetlands outside of the protected area are drying up because of the intensified water extraction by the communities surrounding the National Park and on the adjacent mountains areas, who have increased in numbers, become sedentary and diversified land use around the wetlands.

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Section: Livelihood Strategies In Amboseli From the Mid Holocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Livelihood Strategies In Amboseli From the Mid Holocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Pollen, People and Place: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Ecosystem Change at Amboseli, Kenya

et al. 2018

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“…1), has revealed southwestward movement of Elmenteitan herders into an area populated by complex ceramic-using, fishing hunter-gatherers and a more varied process of adoption of food production. Domestic sheep and goats appear in low numbers starting around 3.7 kya at Wadh Lang'o, and perhaps also at Gogo Falls and Usenge 3 (15), but not at other sites such as Siror (16), suggesting patchy adoption of herding. Specialized dependence on livestock in Africa is first documented in Elmenteitan sites, which date at the earliest to 3.1 kya at Njoro River Cave, east of Lake Victoria (17,18).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Environments and trypanosomiasis risks for early herders in the later Holocene of the Lake Victoria basin, Kenya

Chritz

Marshall

Zagal

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Specialized pastoralism developed ∼3 kya among Pastoral Neolithic Elmenteitan herders in eastern Africa. During this time, a mosaic of hunters and herders using diverse economic strategies flourished in southern Kenya. It has been argued that the risk for trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), carried by tsetse flies in bushy environments, had a significant influence on pastoral diversification and migration out of eastern Africa toward southern Africa ∼2 kya. Elmenteitan levels at Gogo Falls (ca. 1.9–1.6 kya) preserve a unique faunal record, including wild mammalian herbivores, domestic cattle and caprines, fish, and birds. It has been suggested that a bushy/woodland habitat that harbored tsetse fly constrained production of domestic herds and resulted in subsistence diversification. Stable isotope analysis of herbivore tooth enamel (n = 86) from this site reveals, instead, extensive C4 grazing by both domesticates and the majority of wild herbivores. Integrated with other ecological proxies (pollen and leaf wax biomarkers), these data imply an abundance of C4 grasses in the Lake Victoria basin at this time, and thus little risk for tsetse-related barriers to specialized pastoralism. These data provide empirical evidence for the existence of a grassy corridor through which small groups of herders could have passed to reach southern Africa.

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“…The earliest known ceramic type in eastern Africa, Kansyore pottery, dates to between c. 8000 and c. 2000 BP and is associated with a delayed-return hunter-gatherer economy focused on aquatic resources (Karega-Mũnene 2002; Dale et al 2004;Dale and Ashley 2010;Prendergast 2010). Sites are found across a wide region that incorporates western Kenya, northern Tanzania and southern Uganda, with a possible local variant, Lokabulo, found in South Sudan (see Figure 1).…”

Section: Ceramic Studies In the Great Lakes And Rift Valleymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dale (2007) recently pioneered a chaîne opératoire approach to Kansyore and attempted to trace diachronic change using variations in decorative technique and frequencies. Based on only a handful of sites, however, this study has only been a first attempt and there is a well recognised gap in the middle of the 6000 year sequence (Dale and Ashley 2010).…”

Section: Ceramic Classificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeological ceramics from eastern Africa: past approaches and future directions

Ashley

Grillo

2015

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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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.

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Holocene hunter-fisher-gatherer communities: new perspectives on Kansyore Using communities of Western Kenya

Cited by 57 publications

References 38 publications

Pollen, People and Place: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Ecosystem Change at Amboseli, Kenya

Pollen, People and Place: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Ecosystem Change at Amboseli, Kenya

Environments and trypanosomiasis risks for early herders in the later Holocene of the Lake Victoria basin, Kenya

Archaeological ceramics from eastern Africa: past approaches and future directions

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