Environmental Conditions of Northwestern Zimbabwe during the Transition from Foraging to Farming: Using Isotopes, Sediments, and Soils to Reconstruct Late Holocene Climate Change in Hwange National Park

Summary

Hunting-and-gathering in northwestern Zimbabwe was largely replaced by pastoralism and farming between ca. 2,000 and 1,200 years ago. In order to understand whether climate change influenced this transition, we collected environmental and archaeological data during a multi-year research program that included: rockshelter excavation, salvage excavation along eroding stream cuts, and geomorphological and soils analyses of various locales in Hwange National Park. The strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotope ratios for a sample of ostrich eggshell recovered from excavations were also analyzed and dated. Strontium isotope ratios were used to identify whether the samples were of local or non-local origin. Local sample’s carbon and oxygen isotope values were then coupled with soils data to reconstruct Late Holocene environmental conditions. Comparison of this reconstruction with archaeological data examines how changing environmental conditions affected human landscape use throughout this culturally dynamic period.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Taphonomy to Human Ecology: Papers in Honor of Gary Haynes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage