Iron Age Agriculture at the Multi-Component Site of Kakapel Rockshelter, Western Kenya

Summary

This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The domestication of African cereals and origins and spread of plant agriculture in eastern Africa remain poorly understood. Questions about the timing of farming, crop packages, and correlations with migration events, endure largely due to a lack of paleobotanical recovery and high-resolution dating on inland eastern African sites. In this paper we report on the initial findings of archaeological fieldwork at the Kakapel Rockshelter site, southwestern Kenya carried out in collaboration with the National Museums of Kenya. Situated north of Lake Victoria on the low-flanks of Mt. Elgon, Kakapel os a rock art site that preserves a sequence representing the Late-Holocene Kanysore fisher-foragers, Early Iron Age Urewe producing early-farmers, and the Late Iron Age Roulette period. Extensive flotation at the site revealed large quantities of domesticated sorghum, finger millet, and wild plants from different archaeological phases. We also report briefly on the rich faunal assemblage, excavations of burials at the site, and evidence of activity areas and related features. In combination, these lines of evidence provide critical new insights into the chronology of early farming, and lifeways of early farmers, in western Kenya. In addition, results from Kakapel Rockshelter highlight the importance of intensive flotation at eastern African sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• African Archaeology throughout the Holocene   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25383