The Materiality of Mobile Pastoralism: Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives from Samburu, Kenya

This thesis represents the first comprehensive ethnoarchaeological study to date on the material culture of African mobile pastoralism, a way of life economically, culturally, and ideologically centered on the herding of livestock. In Africa, tens of millions of people today still rely on cattle-based pastoralism for survival in arid lands that are unsuitable for agricultural production. Our understanding of ancient pastoralism is still hampered, however, by a belief held by many that nomadic populations such as pastoralists are difficult to trace in the archaeological record. Results from ethnographic research among modern Samburu cattle pastoralists in Kenya in fact challenge common archaeological assumptions about relationships between mobility, subsistence practices, and material culture. Data from twelve months of participant observation, extensive interviewing, and the administration of 117 household surveys reveal a deep and perhaps unexpected integration of pottery and other container types into a highly nomadic lifestyle centered on the herding of livestock. Key findings demonstrate that ceramic production and consumption, for example, are not prohibited by high levels of residential mobility. Instead, ceramic technologies enable pastoralist systems of production in part by allowing people to better exploit certain resources in unpredictable and drought-prone environments. Despite prevailing wisdom, repeated use of some spaces by pastoralists would allow for significant and varied accumulations of ceramics and other archaeologically-recoverable material culture. These results should, ultimately, prompt new dialogue in the archaeological literature on the material consequences of food production

Detecting and mapping the ‘ephemeral’: magnetometric survey of a Pastoral Neolithic settlement at Luxmanda, Tanzania

Common assumptions about the ephemeral archaeological signature of pastoralist settlements have limited the application of geophysical techniques in the investigation of past herding societies. Here, the authors present a geophysical survey of Luxmanda, Tanzania, the largest-known settlement documented for the Pastoral Neolithic era in eastern Africa (c. 5000–1200 BP). The results demonstrate the value and potential of fluxgate gradiometry for the identification of magnetic anomalies relating to archaeological features, at a category of site where evidence for habitation was long thought to be undetectable. The study provides comparative data to enable archaeologists to identify loci for future investigations of mobile populations in eastern Africa and elsewhere

Pastoral Neolithic Settlement at Luxmanda, Tanzania

The later Holocene spread of pastoralism throughout eastern Africa profoundly changed socio-economic and natural landscapes. During the Pastoral Neolithic (ca. 5000–1200 B.P.), herders spread through southern Kenya and northern Tanzania—areas previously occupied only by hunter-gatherers—eventually developing the specialized forms of pastoralism that remain vital in this region today. Research on ancient pastoralism has been primarily restricted to rockshelters and special purpose sites. This paper presents results of surveys and excavations at Luxmanda, an open-air habitation site located farther south in Tanzania, and occupied many centuries earlier, than previously expected based upon prior models for the spread of herding. Technological and subsistence patterns demonstrate ties to northerly sites, suggesting that Luxmanda formed part of a network of early herders. The site is thus unlikely to stand alone, and further surveys are recommended to better understand the spread of herding into the region, and ultimately to southern Africa

Reconstructing Prehistoric African Population Structure

We assembled genome-wide data from 16 prehistoric Africans. We show that the anciently divergent lineage that comprises the primary ancestry of the southern African San had a wider distribution in the past, contributing approximately two-thirds of the ancestry of Malawi hunter-gatherers ∼8,100–2,500 years ago and approximately one-third of the ancestry of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers ∼1,400 years ago. We document how the spread of farmers from western Africa involved complete replacement of local hunter-gatherers in some regions, and we track the spread of herders by showing that the population of a ∼3,100-year-old pastoralist from Tanzania contributed ancestry to people from northeastern to southern Africa, including a ∼1,200-year-old southern African pastoralist. The deepest diversifications of African lineages were complex, involving either repeated gene flow among geographically disparate groups or a lineage more deeply diverging than that of the San contributing more to some western African populations than to others. We finally leverage ancient genomes to document episodes of natural selection in southern African populations

Reconstructing prehistoric African population structure

We assembled genome-wide data from 16 prehistoric Africans. We show that the anciently divergent lineage that comprises the primary ancestry of the southern African San had a wider distribution in the past, contributing approximately two-thirds of the ancestry of Malawi hunter-gatherers ∼8,100–2,500 years ago and approximately one-third of the ancestry of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers ∼1,400 years ago. We document how the spread of farmers from western Africa involved complete replacement of local hunter-gatherers in some regions, and we track the spread of herders by showing that the population of a ∼3,100-year-old pastoralist from Tanzania contributed ancestry to people from northeastern to southern Africa, including a ∼1,200-year-old southern African pastoralist. The deepest diversifications of African lineages were complex, involving either repeated gene flow among geographically disparate groups or a lineage more deeply diverging than that of the San contributing more to some western African populations than to others. We finally leverage ancient genomes to document episodes of natural selection in southern African populations.P.S. was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Swedish Research Council (VR grant 2014-453). J.C.T was supported by a grant from the Program for the Enhancement of Research at Emory University. J.K. and A.M. were supported by the DFG grant KR 4015/1-1 and the Max Planck Society. K.Si. was supported by NSF grant BCS-1613577. M.Ha., A.H., M.Me., and S.P. were supported by the Max Planck Society. A.G.M. and J.P. were supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. R.R. was supported by the South African Medical Research Council. N.B. was supported by ERC starting grant SEALINKS (206148), and R.P. was supported by ERC starting grant ADNABIOARC (263441). M.G.T. was supported by Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (grant number 100719/Z/12/Z). D.R. was supported by NIH grant GM100233 and by NSFHOMINID BCS-1032255 and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. The laboratory at Penn State was supported by the NSF Archaeometry program (BCS-1460369, D.J.K.).http://www.cell.com2018-09-21hj2017Anthropology and ArchaeologySchool of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH