Abstract
Novel trajectories of food production, urbanism, and inter-regional trade fueled the emergence of numerous complex Iron Age polities in central and southern Africa. Renewed research and re-dating efforts in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and along the Swahili Coast are transforming models for how inter-regional interaction spheres contributed to these patterns. While societies in present-day Zambia played an important role in the trade of copper, ivory, gold, and other resources between central and southern Africa, little is known about lifeways during the rise of social complexity in this region. This paper reports the results of re-excavation at Kalundu Mound on the Batoka Plateau of southern Zambia, one of the iconic mound sites of the Iron Age “Kalomo Culture.” New radiocarbon dates were combined with the original dates in a series of Bayesian models, indicating that previous chronologies for the site are not reliable and that the mound site likely developed rapidly from AD 1190 to 1410. Archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, and paleo-proteomic analyses of excavated materials suggests a broad subsistence base combining wild and domesticated species, including the first reported evidence for finger millet (Eleusine coracana) in the region. Considering these findings, it is necessary to re-evaluate the temporal context of the Kalomo site-group, and to also systematically reinvestigate the systems of exchange and subsistence that supported Later Iron Age complexity.
Highlights
The Later Iron Age (LIA) of southern Africa is characterized by the emergence of major polities and expansive trade networks connecting the interior to Indian Ocean markets
Excavations at Kalundu Mound were instrumental in the development of Iron Age archaeology in southeastern Africa
Kalundu and other Kalomo sites have continued to play an important role in the ongoing discourse concerning major putative demographic, economic, and cultural changes in southern Africa
Summary
The Later Iron Age (LIA) of southern Africa is characterized by the emergence of major polities and expansive trade networks connecting the interior to Indian Ocean markets. Trade networks and processes of sociopolitical change were mediated by diverse forager, farmer, and pastoralist communities. The interactions between these communities in the LIA fundamentally shaped linguistic, cultural, and economic legacies of pre- and postcolonial southern Africa (de Luna, 2006; Fagan, 1969; Musonda, 1987, 2013a, 2013b; Ndlovu, 2011). It is increasingly clear that peoples in the “peripheries” played an important role in the broader heterarchical networks and were themselves affected by the trajectories of social complexity underway across the region (Chirikure, et al, 2018a; Klehm, 2017; Mukwende et al, 2018; Pikirayi & Pwiti, 1999)
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