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New radiocarbon dates for Eastern and Southern Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. E. G. Sutton
J. E. G. Sutton
Affiliation:
University of Dar-es-Salaam
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Extract

This article is a follow-up to that of Mr D. W. Phillipson published in this Journal in 1970, and to the six earlier lists compiled for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa by Dr B. M. Fagan. I have endeavoured to include here all radiocarbon dates for archaeological sites of the Iron Age and most of those of the end of the Stone Age in the eastern and southern part of Africa—that is from Ethiopia, the Upper Nile and the Congo Basin southward—which have been published or made available since the preparation of the former articles. Some of these dates are already included in recent numbers of the Journal Radiocarbon, or have been mentioned in publications elsewhere, as indicated in the footnotes. A large proportion of these new dates, however, have not yet been published, and are included here through the agreement of the various individual archaeologists and research bodies, all of whom I wish to thank for their cooperation. In particular, I am indebted to Mr David Phillipson for his willing assistance in providing a number of contacts and relaying information from southern Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , January 1972 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 These earlier lists and commentaries in the Journal are cited in the notes below simply by year of publication.

2 This site is not to be confused with the town of Lalibela and its rock-cut churches in Lasta Province.

3 A preliminary report of these excavations is to appear shortly in Annales d'Ethiopie.

4 See Leakey, L. S. B., Stone Age Cultures of Kenya Colony (Cambridge, 1931).Google Scholar At the time Leakey called this culture ‘Kenya Upper Aurignacian’. It was later renamed ‘Kenya Capsian’.

5 These dates for Gamble's Cave are to be published in due course. Despite their relative recency, Dr Leakey (pers. comm.) maintains that the actual age of the ‘Kenya Capsian’ must be very much older than the measurements indicate, and that the samples have been affected by water seepage.

This argument for an early dating of the ‘Kenya Capsian’ receives some support from investigations in Bed V at Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania. Here a collagen date of the ninth milleimium B.C. (UCLA-1321) is reckoned to ‘fix upper limit for age of Kenya Capsian’ (Radiocarbon, xi (1969), 201), though the sample was not actually associated with cultural material. Dr Leakey further informs me that recent dating tests of the actual ‘Capsian C’ level in Bed V indicate an age several millennia earlier.

6 This subject is summarized in the final chapter of a forthcoming publication by the present writer, The archaeology of the western highlands of Kenya.

7 Nature, vol. 226 (1970), 253–4.Google Scholar

8 This complex is sometimes referred to as the ‘stone bowl Neolithic’. It includes most of the materials that were formerly ascribed to the ‘Gumban cultures’. This is discussed by the present writer in ch. 6 of Shinnie, P. L. (ed.), The African Iron Age (Oxford, 1971), 144–6Google Scholar; and more fully in The archaeology of the western highlands of Kenya (in press).

9 1965, 116; 1967, 527; 1969, 156; 1970, 4–5.

10 All of these new dates are from excavations conducted by or in association with the British Institute of History and Archaeology in East Africa. I am indebted to the Assistant Director, Mr R. C. Soper, for supplying the dates and supplementary information.

On Prospect Farm and Keringet, see Cohen, M., ‘A reassessment of the stone bowl cultures of the rift valley, Kenya’, Azania, v (1970), 27–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Radiocarbon, xi (1969), 201Google Scholar; and information from Dr Leakey.

12 Ibid.

13 See the following section.

14 N.B. Y–570 for Lanet by Nakuru and Y–1395, 1396 for Muringa at Moiben in the western highlands—1965, 116; 1966, 501. For fuller discussion of ‘Sirikwa Holes’, see my forthcoming volume, The archaeology of the western highlands of Kenya.

15 1970, 4.

16 See R. C. Soper's paper, ‘Early Iron Age pottery types in East Africa: comparative analysis’, presented to the Sixth Panafrican Congress on Prehistory at Dakar in 1967; Phillipson, D. W., “The Early Iron Age in Zambia: regional variants and some tentative conclusions”, J. Afr. Hist. ix (1968), 191–211;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHuffman, T. N., ‘The Early Iron Age and the spread of the Bantu’, S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull., xxv (1970), 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 E.g. Oliver, R., ‘The problem of the Bantu expansion’, J. Afr. Hut. vii (1966), 361–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sutton in Shinnie, op. cit.; Huffman, loc. cit.

18 E.g. Fagan, B. M., Southern Africa during the Iron Age (London, 1965), 49;Google ScholarAzania, i (1966), 102;Google ScholarPosnansky, M., Prelude to East African History (London, 1966), 87.Google Scholar

19 The latest discoveries in Rwanda and adjacent territories are discussed in more detail below.

20 Nenquin, J., ‘Dimple-based pots from Kasai’, Man, 1959, no. 242;Google ScholarAzania, iv (1969), 188.Google Scholar

21 See also below.

22 Azania, i (1966), 107.Google Scholar

23 See also the section on South Africa below.

24 Further discussed below; see also 1969, 160–2; 1970, 7.

25 Soper, loc. cit; ‘Kwale: an Early Iron Age site in south-eastern Kenya’, Azania, ii (1967), 1–17Google Scholar; ‘Early Iron Age sites in north-eastern Tanzania’, ibid. 19–36.

26 Azania, iv (1969), 122.Google Scholar This site has not been excavated or radiocarbon-dated.

27 The most recently obtained dates for both Kwale ware and other Iron Age pottery in north-eastern Tanzania are discussed more fully below.

28 Posnansky and Soper propose the more precise term ‘Urewe ware’—see Azania, iv (1969), 148.Google Scholar

29 1969, 155–7. The first radiocarbon determination that was purported to relate to ‘dimple-based’ (Urewe) ware was M–113 (1963, 228) for Nsongezi Rockshelter on the Uganda-Tanzania border. This came out at just under a thousand years ago, and the sample, moreover, was taken not from the layer with the ‘dimple-based’, but from the top of a Late Stone Age layer inmiediately underlying it. The more recently processed dates demonstrate that this Nsongezi date, if not actually faulty, must be disregarded as far as general application is concerned.

30 A report is forthcoming in Annales du Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren.

31 Cf. 1969, 155–6.

32 Progress reports of Mr Peter Schmidt's historical-archaeological fieldwork in Buhaya are included in Tanzania Zamani (unpublished bulletin, History Department, University of Dar es Salaam), nos. 7 and 8 (1970–1).

33 Summers, R., ‘Forty years progress in Iron Age studies in Rhodesia’, S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull. xxv (1970), 95–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 See the discussion of the new Iron Age radiocarbon dates for Rhodesia below.

35 1970, 7, 10; Fagan, B. M., Iron Age cultures in Zambia, i (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Phillipson, ‘The Early Iron Age in Zambia’, 201 ff.; Vogel, J. O., ‘The Kalomo culture of southern Zambia; some notes towards a reassessment’, Zambia Museums Journal, i (1970), 77–88.Google Scholar

36 Excavation reports of Simbusenga and other sites investigated by Vogel are in the press. See the further discussion in the section on Zambian Iron Age dates below.

37 N–257: 1967, 520; N–348: 1969, 158; Soper, ‘Iron Age sites in north-eastern Tanzania’.

38 This site also yielded an interesting sequence of later pottery, which Schmidt is analysing: see Tanzania Zamani, no. 8 (1971).

39 See Sutton in Shinnie, op. cit. 171–3; and Soper, and Golden, in Azania, iv (1970), 42, 74–6.Google Scholar Note also 1970, 9, on the earlier dates for East African roulette-decorated pottery.

40 This site was also excavated by Dr F. Van Noten, and the report is included in the same forthcoming publication of the Musée Royal at Tervuren.

41 N–291, 292, 347, 483, 484: 1967, 519; 1969, 158; 1970, 5.

42 N–257: 1967, 520.

43 This is due to the small size of the charcoal sample that could be collected in the excavation for submission to the laboratory. Certain other new measurements for this region have rather large standard deviations, for the same reason.

44 N–348: 1969, 158. See also Soper, ‘Iron Age sites in north-eastern Tanzania’.

45 See Robinson, K. R., The Iron Age of the southern lake area of Malawi (Malawi Govt., Department of Antiquities, Publ. no. 8, 1970).Google Scholar

46 SR–174, 175: 1970, 6. (SR–175, it will be noted, falls a few centuries later.)

47 Phillipson, ‘The Early Iron Age in Zambia’. A report on Lubusi is appearing in Zambia Museums Journal. Some further dates for Early Iron Age pottery on Late Stone Age sites of the present era in Zambia are discussed in the section on ‘Late Stone Age’ below.

48 Vogel, J. O., ‘Early Iron Age tools from Chundu Farm, Zambia’, Azania, v (1970), 173–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 1969, 163–4

50 1969, 164. On the Kalomo tradition, see above and note 35.

51 1969, 162–3.

52 This information and the radiocarbon date are kindly supplied by D. Cahen of the Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale.

53 Several excavations on recent (and Late Stone Age) sites in South-West Africa have been undertaken by Dr W. E. Wendt. Dates are being processed, and those that are ready will be mentioned in a forthcoming number of Cimbebasia.

54 SR–163: 1970, 7.

55 SR–115 also for Mapela Hill, SR–40 for Woolandale: 1967, 524.

56 Garlake, P. S., ‘The value of imported ceramics in the dating and interpretation of the Rhodesian Iron Age’, J. Afr. Hist. ix (1968), 13–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Rhodesian ruins—a preliminary assessment of their styles and chronology’, ibid. xi (1970), 495–513.

57 Garlake, P. S., ‘Iron Age sites in the Urungwe District of Rhodesia’, S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull. xxv (1970), 25–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Phillipson, D. W. and Fagan, B. M., ‘The date of the Ingombe Ilede burials’, J. Afr. Hist. x (1969), 199–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Y–I712: 1967, 525; GrN–5022: 1970, 7.

60 See Dart, R. A. and Beaumont, P., ‘Iron Age radiocarbon dates from western Swaziland’, S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull. xxiv (1969), 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Radiocarbon, xi (1969), 645–6.Google Scholar

62 1970, 12.

63 See Humphreys, A. J. B. and Maggs, T. M. O'C., ‘Further graves and culturaL material from the banks of the Riet River’, S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull. xxv (1970), 116–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and further reports forthcoming.

64 Van Noten, F., ‘Excavations at Munyama Cave’, Antiquity, xlv (1971), 56–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For other excavations and radiocarbon dates in sub-Saharan Africa indicating a similar age for the first blade and microlithic industries, see Clark, J. D., The prehistory of Africa (London, 1970), 174, 240–1.Google Scholar Certain of these dates, but presumably not all, may be faulty.

65 See Azania, iii (1968), 157;Google Scholar and Posnansky, M. and Cole, G. H., ‘Recent excavations at Magosi, Uganda: a preliminary report’, Man, 1963, no. 133.Google Scholar

66 Robbins, L. H., ‘A recent archaeological disovery in the Turkana District of norther Kenya’ Azania, ii (1967, 69–73).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 1970, 4.

68 1970, 2.

69 GX–1579: 1970, 3. This site was originally named ‘Katima C’: see Phillipson, L., S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull. xxiii (1968), 90 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 For further evidence bearing on this subject of early forest clearance in central and eastern Africa, see Clark, , The Prehistory of Africa, 205–6.Google Scholar

71 Radiocarbon, xi (1969), 646.Google Scholar

72 Schweitzer, F. R., ‘A preliminary report of excavations of a cave at Die Kelders’, S. Afr. Archaeol. Bull., xxv (1970), 136–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 E.g. Radiocarbon, xii (1970), 458 ff.Google Scholar