Environmental change and political-economic upheaval in precolonial western Uganda

Abstract

This paper reassesses available evidence for environmental and cultural changes in western Uganda since 1000 bc. The period of study includes the introduction of iron working in the region, as well as the transition to nucleated settlement patterns and the apparent decline of these settlements, prior to the colonial period. Several oscillations in climate conditions, from relatively dry to relatively wet, are recorded by palaeo-climate data. Some of these can be linked to variations in vegetation cover, apparent in pollen records from a number of locations. There is a difficulty in establishing cause–effect relationships here, because human impact can have a similar impact on moist forests to increases in climatic aridity. However, there are three cases where the explication of changes in climate, vegetation and the level of human impact are possible. The first occurred towards the end of the first millennium ad and coincided with the beginning of the Later Iron Age. This was a period of major changes in cultural relationships and settlement pattern, during which variations in environmental conditions may have influenced rather than forced a process of political centralization. Increased climatic aridity and problems of soil exhaustion may have driven a subsequent change in the pattern of settlement, towards the beginning of the ad 1500s. Agricultural shortfalls and consequent problems of food insecurity among large, sedentary populations, towards the end of a relatively dry period during the late ad 1600s and early 1700s, may explain the decline of nucleated settlements.