Prospect Farm and the Middle and Later Stone Age Occupation of Mt. Eburru (Central Rift, Kenya) in an East African Context

Abstract

Located within the Nakuru-Naivasha basin on the northern slope of Mt. Eburru, the open-air site of Prospect Farm (Central Rift, Kenya) is one of the few East African sites that have yielded a stratigraphic sequence containing archaeological levels dating from the late Middle Pleistocene to the Holocene. Excavations at the site by Barbara Whitehead Anthony and Glynn Isaac in 1963–1964 exposed Pastoral Neolithic (Stone Bowl culture) and Later Stone Age (LSA; Kenya Capsian) levels overlying four Middle Stone Age (MSA) levels attributed to the Prospect Industry, a local expression of the Kenya Stillbay. This paper integrates the information currently available for the site and discusses its relevance in a wider East African context. Furthermore, it presents the results of a density survey completed in 2014, mapping the spatial distribution of artifacts along the northern slope of Mt. Eburru and providing data on the landscape setting of the site. The survey identified marked differences in the distribution of diagnostic MSA vs. LSA artifacts: whereas MSA finds cluster at two particular mid-altitude locations (2,102–2,108 m and 2,138–2,140 m a.s.l.) corresponding to the position of Anthony’s Localities I and II, LSA finds tend to show a much broader spatial distribution including both higher and lower altitudes.