Climate, history, society over the last millennium in southeast Africa

Climate variability has been causally linked to the transformation of society in pre-industrial southeast Africa. A growing critique, however, challenges the simplicity of ideas that identify climate as an agent of past societal change; arguing instead that the value of historical climate–society research lies in understanding human vulnerability and resilience, as well as how past societies framed, responded and adapted to climatic phenomena. We work across this divide to present the first critical analysis of climate–society relationships in southeast Africa over the last millennium. To achieve this, we review the now considerable body of scholarship on the role of climate in regional societal transformation, and bring forward new perspectives on climate–society interactions across three areas and periods using the theoretical frameworks of vulnerability and resilience. We find that recent advances in paleoclimatology and archaeology give weight to the suggestion that responses to climate variability played an important part in early state formation in the Limpopo valley (1000–1300), though evidence remains insufficient to clarify similar debates concerning Great Zimbabwe (1300–1450/1520). Written and oral evidence from the Zambezi-Save (1500–1830) and KwaZulu-Natal areas (1760–1828) nevertheless reveals a plurality of past responses to climate variability. These were underpinned by the organization of food systems, the role of climate-related ritual and political power, social networks, and livelihood assets and capabilities, as well as the nature of climate variability itself. To conclude, we identify new lines of research on climate, history and society, and discuss how these can more directly inform contemporary African climate adaptation challenges

The Medicine Tree: Unsettling palaeoecological perceptions of past environments and human activity

In this paper, we consider palaeoecological approaches to past landscapes and reflect upon how these are relevant to archaeological themes concerning concepts of environmental change and the role of past and present human communities in these processes. In particular, we highlight the importance of local context in the perception and understanding of landscape. Utilising a case study from Nepal, we look to ‘unsettle’ a conventional palaeoecological interpretation of a pollen record, originally constructed on western ecological principles, and instead draw on an interpretative perspective rooted in local Buddhist ecological knowledge, or a ‘folk taxonomy’, known as ‘The Medicine Tree’. We discuss how the interpretations of patterns and processes of vegetation change from a pollen record are not necessarily absolute. In particular, we outline how the palaeoecological frame of enquiry and reference is rooted in an essentially Eurocentric, Western scientific paradigm, which, in turn, shapes how we perceive and conceive of past landscapes and the role of ‘anthropogenic impact’ on vegetation. The aim of this is not to suggest that scientific approaches to the ‘reconstruction’ of past landscapes are necessarily invalid, but to illustrate how ‘empirical’ scientific methods and interpretations in archaeological science are contingent upon specific social and cultural frames of reference. We discuss the broader relevance of this, such as how we interpret past human activity and perception of landscape change, the ways in which we might look to mobilise research in the context of contemporary problems, issues concerning ‘degraded landscapes’ and how we incorporate local and archaeological perspectives with palaeoecology within an interconnected and iterative process

The elusive archaeology of Kongo urbanism: the case of Kindoki, Mbanza Nsundi (Lower Congo, DRC)

We present here results, analyses and an in-depth historical contextualisation of the fieldwork undertaken in 2012 and 2013 at the Kindoki site in the Lower Congo (DRC). This site is linked with Mbanza Nsundi, one of the Kongo Kingdom's provincial capitals, which turns out to be archaeologically 'elusive'. Pinpointing its location proved to be particularly challenging. To this end, a historically-informed excavation methodology was developed that was never implemented in Central Africa before. We combined a strategy of systematic test pits with a large-scale 50 m grid approach. A cemetery was identified on Kindoki Hill with distinct but contemporaneous quarters of a 16th-17thcenturies settlement on both sides. The cemetery itself contains mainly 18th-century burials, in all likelihood of successive Nsundi rulers. The foreign, especially Portuguese, ceramics excavated on the hilltop and the hundreds of Venetian and likely Bavarian beads found in the graves are indicative of Mbanza Nsundi's connection to trade routes linking the Atlantic coast with the Pool region. The most striking discovery is that of a previously unknown type of comb-impressed pottery, from a pit with a calibrated radiocarbon date AD 1294-1393 (2 sigma). This suggests that a settlement had been developing at Kindoki since at least the 14th century, which allows us, for the very first time, to spatially bridge Kongo history and 'prehistory'. For the entire Lower Congo region only three 14C dates posterior to AD 1000 were available before the start of the KongoKing project, twelve have been added for just Kindoki