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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

1 I am most grateful to all those who have discovered and reported sites and who have helped with the excavations described in this paper. My own research was financed by the National Monuments Commission of Zambia. All the Zambian antiquities here described are preserved in the Livingstone Museum, Livingstone, Zambia.

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