An ethnoarchaeological framework for the identification and distinction of Late Holocene archaeological sites in East Africa

Abstract

One of the interpretive problems in the study of the advent of pastoralism in East Africa has been the difficulty of distinguishing archaeological sequences of local hunter-gatherers with access to domestic stock or in the early stages of the adoption of herding, from those of in-migrating pastoralists with a subsistence strategy that may have included wild animals. Lack of knowledge of how these two interacting socioeconomic groups might be distinguished archaeologically impedes our better understanding of prehistoric hunter-gatherer interactions with pastoralists and the secondary adoption of food production. In this article, I use ethnoarchaeological observations among the historic Mukogodo hunter-gatherers and the pastoral Maasai of Kenya to propose a scheme of interpretive guidelines that may be used to distinguish archaeological sequences associated with different socioeconomic adaptations during the ‘Pastoral Neolithic’ in East Africa. My analysis shows that site features and subtle patterns in faunal assemblages can be useful in the identification and distinction of relevant sites, and in addressing some of the interpretive difficulties that archaeologists have encountered in the study of late Holocene archaeological sites in the region.