Kantsyore Island

The site of Wadh Lang'o in southern Nyanza Province (Kenya) has produced a very large faunal assemblage in association with Kansyore, Elmenteitan and Urewe ceramics. The stratigraphy of the site appears to be intact and six dates have been obtained from the sequence, making this the best opportunity to look at diachronic change in subsistence strategies in this region. The main results of the zooarchaeological analysis are presented here, with emphasis on the Kansyore component. Two important findings are discussed: first, the fish remains, when taken together with remains from other Kansyore sites and considering the behavioural traits of these fish, suggest that Kansyore riverside and lakeshore sites were occupied in distinct seasons and used together in a single settlement and subsistence system. Second, the mammalian remains suggest that while Kansyore foragers hunted a broad range of taxa, they also began to consume domesticates perhaps as early as the mid-to late-third millennium cal. BC. This suggests that occupants of late Kansyore sites were in contact with food producers, but whether the domestic animal remains are the result of exchange, or of adopting food production, remains ambiguous.Le site de Wadh Lang'o, au sud de la province de Nyanza (Kenya), a produit un grand ensemble faunistique en association avec poterie du style Kansyore, Elmenteitan et Urewe. La stratigraphie du site semble entière et six datations ont permis de dater la séquence, en rendant ce site fondamental pour l?étude du changement diachronique des stratégies de subsistance de la région. Les principaux résultats de l?analyse zooarchéologique sont présentés ici, avec un accent sur le composant Kansyore. Deux découvertes sont discutées: la première est l?étude du poisson. Les restes du poisson quand sont considérés en conjonction avec d?autres sites de type Kansyore, suggère que les sites près du lac et ceux formés prés des rivières ont été occupés dans des saisons différentes et ont été parties d'un système saisonnier de subsistance et d'installation. La seconde découverte, d?après l?étude des restes des macro-mammifères, suggère que bien que les populations du Kansyore aient chassé une gamme très grande de taxons sauvages, ils consommaient aussi des animaux domestiqués au milieu ou fin du troisième millénaire av. J.-C. Ceci indique que les occupants des sites appartenant à la phase finale du Kansyore étaient en contact avec des producteurs. La manière auquel ces populations obtenaient ces animaux (échange, élevage) reste encore ambiguë.*

Section: Seasonality Settlement Patterns and Fishing Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Kansyore fisher-foragers and transitions to food production in East Africa: the view from Wadh Lang'o, Nyanza Province, Western Kenya

Prendergast

2010

“…Leakey et al (1948;see also Hiernaux 1960;Van Noten 1979) recorded Urewe ceramics, Chapman (1967) defined Kansyore (see also Pearce and Posnansky 1963), and Louis Leakey (1931) described the 'Stone Bowl culture', which later became a sub-facet of the Pastoral Neolithic. Such a qualitative approach is not surprising; these practitioners were shaped by a broadly culture-historical school of thought that sought to map culture units through material culture distributions.…”

Section: Ceramic Classificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is therefore appropriate that this fiftieth anniversary issue of Azania should dedicate a paper to ceramic studies. Indeed, this journal has been at the heart of eastern African ceramic research since its inception, be it early type-site descriptions, such as Susannah Chapman's (1967) discussion of Kansyore in only the second issue of Azania, or the seminal typological studies of scholars such as Soper (1971) on Early Iron Age ceramics or Collett and Robertshaw (1983) for Rift Valley types. More recently, with an expanded geographical and temporal remit, Azania has addressed ceramic studies further afield with special issues on West African ceramics (Gijanto and Ogundiran 2011;Haour et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeological ceramics from eastern Africa: past approaches and future directions

Ashley

Grillo

2015

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.

“…Many of the earliest appearances of metallurgical-related subject matter comprised descriptions and accompanying illustrations of metal objects, with occasional references to the waste products of smelting (e.g. Sassoon 1966;Chapman 1967;Robinson 1969;Phillipson 1970;Vogel 1970;Soper 1971;Mills and Filmer 1972;Ambrose et al 1984). Although very little discussion accompanies these short descriptions, it is acknowledged that the primary objective in these early days was to begin to construct a corpus of metallurgical data upon which future analyses could be undertaken and broader discussions founded.…”

Section: Metallurgical Research In Azania: the First 25 Years 1966-1990mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making metals in East Africa and beyond: archaeometallurgy inAzania, 1966–2015

Iles

Lyaya

2015

Over the course of the last 50 years, the field of archaeometallurgy has grown dramatically, becoming firmly established within the realm of archaeological science.The archaeology and ethnography of African metallurgy has made a major contribution to this field, providing valuable information on the impressive range of raw materials and techniques that past metal producers and metalworkers used, as well as providing important insights into the socio-cultural settings that these technologies operated within. This paper summarises the role that Azania played in communicating some of this research, and charts the development of African archaeometallurgy through Azania's pages. KeywordsMetal production, metalworking, iron, copper, Sub-Saharan Africa Metallurgy in eastern Africa: a brief summaryMetals served a variety of roles within African societies, ranging from the functional and the decorative, to the symbolic and the communicative. The process of winning metal from an ore is a difficult procedure, reliant on the procurement of high-quality ores, ceramics and fuels, and the application of complex technical knowledge. It is a resource-hungry and time-hungry technology, which runs a high risk of failure, but when it succeeds it almost miraculously transforms stone into a substance with a new set of material properties. Perhaps for these reasons, rituals and symbolism often accompanied the activities surrounding metal production and metalworking, manifest in the items used to create or manipulate metal (furnaces, medicines, bellows, tuyères and tools) or the songs, movements and behaviours associated with the processes themselves. By studying the objects and the processes used to make them, the broader