2008 Update
The Later Prehistory of West Turkana (LPWT) team is a multidisciplinary group of researchers studying human behavioral change in West Turkana during the past 10,000 years. The team is exploring a wide range of interests, including intensive fishing-hunting-gathering, early herding, and the development of complex societies around Turkana.
Current LPWT members Elisabeth Hildebrand (archaeobotany), John Shea (stone tools), Veronica Waweru (geochronology), and Katherine Grillo (ceramics) did four weeks of fieldwork in July 2008, using the new TBI Turkwel campus as a base camp. Survey and excavation focused on the Losedok hills southwest of Kalokol, Ayangiyeng Inland Delta, and Lothagam, and sites overlooking Lake Turkana south of Kalokol.
Early fishers: Extremely dry conditions prevailed across northern Africa during most of the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 20,000-10,000 years ago). Little is known of human lifeways around Turkana during this time, and it is possible that people took refuge in the neighboring Ethiopian highlands. When wet conditions resumed c. 9000 years ago, Lake Turkana rose >80 m above its present shoreline. Larry Robbins’ research at Lothagam (1980) showed that during this period fisher-hunter-gatherers lived around the lake, using bone harpoons to capture fish and aquatic animals. LPWT aims to improve chronological resolution of Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer sites, and also discover more sites from this period to examine similarities and contrasts in diet and economy. In 2008, we
- revisited Lothagam to collect more dating samples from the early Holocene sequence. Veronica Waweru is coordinating dating of these samples as part of her Holocene geochronology project;
- documented new sites in the Losedok Hills area southwest of Kalokol. Kate Grillo is integrating observations about the pottery into her studies of ceramic technology in the Turkana Basin;
- documented several new sites in the Ayangiyeng Inland Delta, a few km south of the Turkwell River. This would have been an attractive location throughout the Holocene.
Early herders: People living near Turkana began practicing herding about 4000 years ago. It is not clear whether they adopted the practice from pastoralists farther north, or whether advancing populations of herders moved into Turkana and began interacting with local people. John Barthelme (1985) has published a number of herding sites on the east side of Turkana, but little research has been done on early herding economies west of the lake. LPWT aims to detect sites with early use of domestic stock, compare technology and material culture from these sites with earlier fishing camps, and place use of domestic animals in a broader economic context.
- New sites recorded during our 2008 survey may include early herding camps; future excavations should indicate whether their fauna include domestic stock;
- We began investigating special-use sites, long thought to be associated with early herding (see below).
Social complexity: Archaeological research by Nelson (1995) and Lynch & Robbins (1978) has shown that prehistoric people around Turkana developed special-use sites that may have functioned as ceremonial centers or astronomical indicators. Consisting of stone circles, elliptical platforms, and arrangement of pillars, the sites are locally known as “namoratunga” by Turkana. Although one site in East Turkana, Jarigole, was partially excavated by Charles Nelson (1995), those in West Turkana have received less attention. LPWT aims to obtain secure dates and comparisons of multiple namoratunga in West Turkana, to better understand their economic context and social implications.
- In 2008, LPWT found one previously undocumented pillar site, and did a small test excavation.
- In 2009, we intend to test other pillar sites to obtain dates and plan a long-term excavation strategy.
LPWT looks forward to gaining new members and collaborating with researchers at the National Museums of Kenya, other Kenyan scholars, and other research teams working in the Turkana Basin.
References
Lynch, BM and LH Robbins. 1978. Namoratunga: The first archeoastronomical evidence in sub-Saharan Africa. Science 200:766–68.
Nelson, CM. 1995. The work of the Koobi Fora field school at the Jarigole pillar site. Kenya Past and Present 27:49-63.
2007 Update
In July 2007 a team from Stony Brook University conducted a reconnaissance in West Turkana of sites in the Galana Boi Formation dating to ,9000-4000 years ago. During this period (the early Holocene), the people living around Turkana undertook two major innovations. First, around. 9000 years ago, they developed an intensive fishing and hunting adaptation, one that left behind barbed bone harpoons, flexed burials, and some of the earliest pottery in East Africa. Thousands of years later, they began herding cattle, sheep, and goats, acquired from Sahara and Sahel regions to the North.
This reconnaissance is the first stage of a larger project, "The Later Prehistory of West Turkana", directed by Professors John Shea and Elisabeth Hildebrand, that will investigate when, why and how these innovations occurred. Professor Shea is interested in how stone tool production accommodates changes in peoples' economy and settlement patterns focus. Professor Hildebrand studies the beginnings of herding and farming in several areas of northeast Africa, and examines how prehistoric changes in food-getting strategies may have affected social structure. TBI Postdoctoral Fellow Veronica Waweru is collecting samples for radiometric dating of early Holocene sites. TBI Graduate Fellow Ian Wallace is studying how morphology of prehistoric human skeletons reflects differences among hunting, fishing, and herding adaptations.
The small team left Nairobi 15 July for a 2.5-week reconnaissance near Lodwar, Kalakol, Lothagam, and the lower Kerio Valley. The main aims for this trip were to relocate and georeference sites documented in the 1970s and 1980s, to devise a system for surveying Holocene deposits near the lake, and to become acquainted with local people and living conditions. Informal surveys bore out earlier reports that the area boasts a wealth of Holocene sites. We relocated many significant sites documented before GPS technology became available, and discovered several new sites in different locations and environmental settings. The latter include pottery- and harpoon-bearing sites in ancient beach deposits probably used by hunter-gatherer fishers, and a "pillar site," containing standing stones, probably constructed by early herders.
The Later Prehistory of West Turkana Project will augment past and ongoing research on the East side of the lake, creating as rich a record for the Early Holocene as there is for earlier periods in the Turkana Basin.
