Human Landscape Modification and Environmental Change in the Western Kenyan Highlands

Summary

Interpretive challenges involving issues of equifinality and causation can chronically hamper

environmental reconstruction efforts, as numerous physical, environmental, or anthropogenic

processes may potentially be responsible for creating observed raw data patterns. Nested multi-

proxy and multi­scalar analyses offer potential means of approaching these difficult conceptual

issues which can plague interpretations reliant on single lines of proxy evidence. A dataset

comprised of multiple paleoecological proxies, including pollen, phytoliths, and fungal spores,

derived from a sediment core from Kingwal Swamp, Kenya, is presented in order to illustrate

these issues and means of resolution. Using the different origin points, production, distribution,

deposition modes, and associations of these proxies, I argue that discord in data between these

sources can aid in isolating some of the possible environmental scenarios which may have

produced particular data patterns, and may enable researchers to more effectively separate

anthropogenic versus climatic impacts on past environments. It is proposed that more intensive

study of the microbotanical content of sediments is critical to improving paleoecological, and by

extension, archaeological knowledge of ancient landscapes and their inhabitants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16669