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A New Framework for the Study of Early Pastoral Communities in East Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Peter Robertshaw
Affiliation:
British Institute of Eastern Africa
David Collett
Affiliation:
British Institute of Eastern Africa

Extract

This review provides a new interpretative framework for the ‘Neolithic’ in East Africa. A seriation of pottery assemblages is used to delineate several archaeological traditions, the implications of which include rejection of the use of the terms ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Pastoral Neolithic’, and the demise of previous attempts at archaeological—linguistic correlations. Evaluation of the dating evidence brings into question the validity of early dates for domestic stock and cultivated crops in the region. A new model for the development of specialized herd management strategies in the Central Rift Valley is outlined. This model rests upon the definition of pastoralism as an ideological system rather than as a subsistence strategy. Finally, the archaeological evidence for the antecedents of the early pastoral communities of East Africa is examined and the ascription of some of these assemblages to the ‘aquatic civilization of Middle Africa’ is questioned.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

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6 ‘Industries’ and ‘traditions’ tend to be interchangeable terms in archaeological parlance, the former being used by Stone Age researchers and the latter by Iron Age specialists. The two terms are not in fact co-terminous: an Iron Age ‘tradition’ perhaps is best correlated with a Stone Age ‘industrial complex’, while ‘phases’ and ‘fades’ of traditions are more, but not entirely, comparable with ‘industries’. The terminology of ‘tradition’, ‘phases’ and ‘fades’ is preferred in this article; see Willey, G. R. and Phillips, P., Method and Theory in American Archaeology (Chicago, 1958).Google Scholar

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27 See n. 15.

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30 It seems to be almost universally agreed that radiocarbon dates on charcoal are more reliable than those on bone. However, there remains always the question of the validity of the association between the charcoal sample and the archaeological material to which the date is believed to refer.

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44 F. B. Marshall and D. P. Gifford, pers. comm. These researchers are also doing valuable work on the age-structures of prehistoric herds.

45 Historical linguists, particularly Ehret, have argued that PN peoples would at least have known of various domestic crops.

46 Carbonized seeds have been recovered by froth- flotation from the site of Ngamuriak (Marshall, Fiona and Robertshaw, P. T., ‘Preliminary report on archaeological research in the Loita-Mara region, S. W. Kenya’, Azania XVII (1982) (in press)Google Scholar) but these await identification.

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55 Oliver, Roland has written on ‘The Nilotic contribution to Bantu Africa’, J. Afr. Hist. XXIII, iv (1982)Google Scholar; in a sense, what we are proposing here is a Bantu contribution to Nilotic Africa (though we would prefer not to make the archaeological correlation with Nilotic). Whereas we attribute changes in PN economy to the possibilities raised by the appearance of Iron Age farmers in the Eastern Highlands, Oliver (ibid.) attributes them to an influx of pastoral Nilotes replacing earlier Southern Cushitic food producers around the end of the first millenium A.D. The archaeological evidence for this period is all too scanty, and we put little faith in historical linguistics and less in glottochronology. However, even given population influx, specialised subsistence strategies of herd management are only possible where there is access to farming groups. Thus it is, in a sense, the Bantu, rather than Nilotes, who create the conditions for pastoral expansion.

56 Some of these predictions and the available archaeological evidence are outlined in Robertshaw and Collett, ‘Pastoral peoples’. The model will require elaboration and review as archaeological data accumulate.

57 Participants at a one-day seminar in Nairobi, November, 1982.

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60 Robertshaw and Collett, ‘Pastoral peoples’. Similarly, Maasai subsistence in the nineteenth century in southern Kenya was a reflexion of cultural values, environmental constraints, and economic ties with farming peoples.

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85 Originally described by Chapman, S., ‘Kantsyore Island’, Azania, ii (1967), 165–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The distribution, affinities and dating of Kansyore have been reviewed by Collett and Robertshaw, ‘Early Iron Age’; Kansyore assemblages now fall within the Oltome tradition (see Collett and Robertshaw, ‘Pottery’).

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88 Collett and Robertshaw, ‘Early Iron Age’.

89 Robertshaw and Mawson, ‘Excavations’.

90 Robertshaw, ‘Eastern Equatoria’.

91 Robertshaw et al., ‘Shell middens’.

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93 See, for example, part of a hut-floor revealed at Ngamuriak; Marshall and Robertshaw, ‘Preliminary report’.