African Archaeology

The development of pastoralism transformed human diets and societies in grasslands worldwide. The long-term success of cattle herding in Africa has been sustained by dynamic food systems, consumption of a broad range of primary and secondary livestock products, and the evolution of lactase persistence (LP), which allows digestion of lactose into adulthood and enables the milk-based, high-protein, low-calorie diets characteristic of contemporary pastoralists. Despite the presence of multiple alleles associated with LP in ancient and present-day eastern African populations, the contexts for selection for LP and the long-term development of pastoralist foodways in this region remain unclear. Pastoral Neo-lithic (c. 5000 to 1200 BP) faunas indicate that herders relied on cattle, sheep, and goats and some hunting, but direct information on milk consumption, plant use, and broader culinary patterns is rare. Combined chemical and isotopic analysis of ceramic sherds (n = 125) from Pastoral Neolithic archaeological contexts in Kenya and Tanzania, using compound-specific δ 13 C and Δ 13 C values of the major fatty acids, provides chemical evidence for milk, meat, and plant processing by ancient herding societies in eastern Africa. These data provide the earliest direct evidence for milk product consumption and reveal a history of reliance on animal products and other nutrients, likely extracted through soups or stews, and plant foods. They document a 5,000-y temporal framework for eastern Africa pastoralist cuisines and cultural contexts for selection for alleles distinctive of LP in eastern Africa. archaeology | ceramics | lipid residue analysis | pastoralism | lactase persistence

Archaeological ostrich eggshell (OES) bead assemblages often comprise a variety of colours. However, it is unclear if the range of colours seen in OES beads were caused deliberately by anthropogenic action, or accidentally by post-depositional taphonomic factors. In this study, OES fragments were heated to four different temperatures (200°C, 350°C, 550°C, and 700°C) to recreate colour variation observed in the OES bead assemblage from the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 1 occupations at Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa. Beads were manufactured from the four samples of heated OES fragments, as well as from an unheated sample of control fragments. Time to perforation, successful bead manufacture and/or breakage, as well as loss of mass and fra-gility, were all documented to examine if heated ostrich eggshell performed differently from unheated ostrich eggshell during bead manufacture. Our results show that three of the four heated samples resulted in detrimental changes to ostrich eggshell properties, specifically the loss of mass and an increase in fragility, which negatively affected bead manufacture indicated by increased incidence of breakage and longer average times to perforation and completion. We compare these findings with the worked OES assemblage from Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa, and our results indicate that unintentional heat treatment may have substantially impacted the colouration of the worked OES assemblage at Grassridge, especially with regard to heat treated preforms. Moreover, we argue that the impact of unintentional heat treatment on the colouration of worked OES assemblages , and especially preforms, should be more broadly considered across the archaeological record.

African Middle Stone Age (MSA) populations used pigments, manufactured and wore personal ornaments, made abstract engravings, and produced fully shaped bone tools. However, ongoing research across Africa reveals variability in the emergence of cultural innovations in the MSA and their subsequent development through the Later Stone Age (LSA). When present, it appears that cultural innovations manifest regional variability, suggestive of distinct cultural traditions. In eastern Africa, several Late Pleistocene sites have produced evidence for novel activities, but the chronologies of key behavioral innovations remain unclear. The 3 m deep, well-dated, Panga ya Saidi sequence in eastern Kenya, encompassing 19 layers covering a time span of 78 kyr beginning in late Marine Isotope Stage 5, is the only known African site recording the interplay between cultural and ecological diversity in a coastal forested environment. Excavations have yielded worked and incised bones, ostrich eggshell beads (OES), beads made from seashells, worked and engraved ocher pieces, fragments of coral, and a belemnite fossil. Here, we provide, for the first time, a detailed analysis of this material. This includes a taphonomic, archeozoological, technological, and functional study of bone artifacts; a technological and morphometric analysis of personal ornaments; and a technological and geochemical analysis of ocher pieces. The interpretation of the results stemming from the analysis of OES beads is guided by an ethnoarcheological perspective and field observations. We demonstrate that key cultural innovations on the eastern African coast are evident by 67 ka and exhibit remarkable diversity through the LSA and Iron Age. We suggest the cultural trajectories evident at Panga ya Saidi were shaped by both regional traditions and cultural/demic diffusion.

From its inception in 2014, the interdisciplin-ary Bantu Mobility Project has sought to refocus research on the Bantu Expansions away from the macro-scale towards a "writ small" approach within a well-defined region with well-understood episodes of language expansion, namely, the middle Kafue and middle Zambezi catchments of southern Zambia. This tighter focus enables the project to capture the human agency shaping movements of people, animals, material goods, and languages, and to consider the productive tension between mobility and rootedness as Bantu-speaking populations became settled in particular regions between the sixth and sixteenth centuries AD. From an archaeological standpoint, careful study of the spatial contexts of recovered artifacts-and of the various human activities that left them behind-captures different forms and scales of mobility that existed alongside the rootedness of mounded settlements occupied over generations. This paper shows how a better understanding of those spatial contexts, and the settlement patterns and land use they encode, is being achieved around Basanga, Zambia, by combining systematic archaeological survey with data derived from satellite imagery using analytical techniques available through GIS, such as spatial interpolation and linear regression modeling. Ultimately, the project will aim to integrate the insights of that geospatial analysis with other archaeological, linguistic, historical, and environmental datasets to capture the stories of the people whose ideas, practices, and forms of mobility and rootedness constituted the local experience of the Bantu Expansions. Résumé Depuis sa création en 2014, le Bantu Mobility Project, un projet interdisciplinaire sur l'histoire de la mobilité des bantous, a proposé de remplacer une approche à grande échelle vers une approche à petite échelle dans une région bien définie avec des épisodes d'expansion linguistique bien compris, les bassins ver-sants du Kafue moyen et du Zambezi moyen dans le sud de la Zambie. Cette focalisation permet au projet de capturer l'agence humaine influençant les mouvements des personnes, des animaux, des matériaux et des langues, et de prendre en compte la tension productive entre mobilité et enracinement au fur lorsque les populations de langue bantou se sont installées dans ces régions entre les 6 e et 16 e siècles. D'un point de vue archéologique, une étude du contexte spatial des artefacts récupérés (et des diverses activités humaines qui les ont laissés) capture différentes formes et échelles des mobilité qui existaient parallèlement à l'enracinement des établissements en ruines occupés au fil des généra-tions. Une meilleure compréhension de ces contextes spatiaux, ainsi que des modèles de peuplement et de Afr Archaeol Rev

This essay explores the interface between specific features in the archaeological record pertaining to African iron smelting and various symbolic meanings that are linked to those remains by ritual
performances and their associated beliefs. Employing a critical direct historical approach that uses ethnographic observations and historical evidence, cross-cultural regularities can be isolated in the
types of symbolic meanings that are attributed to ritual offerings placed in the bases of African smelting furnaces. Such meanings range from interdiction of ancestral spirits and witchcraft to the infusion of the furnace with attributes of a fertility—one of the primary symbolic armatures that confers meaning on iron smelting. Comparison of the ethnographic models to archaeological evidence
then reveals that ritual treatments of iron smelting show significant continuity through time—particularly in the domain of fertility symbolism—reaching as far back through time as the midfirst
millennium B.C.