Late Pleistocene Archaeofauna from the Kasitu Valley of Northern Malawi: Palaeoenvironments and Evolution of Faunal Communities in the Zambezian Ecozone

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Zambezian Ecozone of east-central Africa comprises faunal communities that include elements from both southern and eastern Africa. The region has long served as an important crossroads for faunal exchange, but its timing and implications for hunter-gatherer behavior are unknown. Late Pleistocene faunal assemblages from east-central Africa are rare, and none have been reported from Malawi, which occupies a key position between north and south. Here, we report the oldest archaeofaunal assemblages from Malawi, recovered by the Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project in 2016 – 2018. These assemblages from the rock shelter sites of Hora 1 and Mazinga 1 span the Late Pleistocene (>30 ka) and Early Holocene (~8 ka), providing a rare opportunity to examine the evolution of faunal communities across the transition from the last glacial. We discuss the taxonomic composition of the Pleistocene assemblages relative to modern and Early Holocene occurrences. Zooarchaeological findings are complemented by light isotope analyses of land snail shell, ostrich eggshell, and mammal teeth for paleoenvironmental reconstruction, and strontium isotope ratios for spatial provenience. This work represents the first step towards a better understanding of the region’s biogeography, which provides an essential framework for investigating the behavioral adaptations of Stone Age foragers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24126