Archaeology

The West Turkana area of northern Kenya offers a long plio-pleistocene sequence (4/0.7 Ma) within which archaeological sites are present during the time interval 2.4 /0.7 Ma. This unique situation gives the West Turkana Archaeological Project (WTAP), lead by Dr. Hélène Roche from CNRS (France), the opportunity to scrutinize the evolution of hominins technical behavior from Early Oldowan to Middle Acheulean. More than 60 sites have been identified so far, among which 35 of them have been excavated or tested, yielding a wealth of lithic material, very often associated with faunal remains.

Hélène Roche has participated in one of the TBI workshops at Ileret and plans to take full advantage of the Turkwel facility to support her field research in future years.

The Later Prehistory of West Turkana (LPWT) team is a multidisciplinary group of researchers studying human behavioral change in West Turkana during the past 10,000 years. The team is exploring a wide range of interests, including intensive fishing-hunting-gathering, early herding, and the development of complex societies around Turkana. Current LPWT members Elisabeth Hildebrand (archaeobotany), John Shea (stone tools), Veronica Waweru (geochronology), and Katherine Grillo (ceramics) did four weeks of fieldwork in July 2008, using the new TBI-Turkwel campus as a base camp. Survey and excavation focused on the Losedok hills southwest of Kalokol, Ayangiyeng Inland Delta, and Lothagam, and sites overlooking Lake Turkana south of Kalokol.

Larry Robbins’ research at Lothagam in the 1980’s showed that during the Holocene fisher- hunter-gatherers lived around the lake, using bone harpoons to capture fish and aquatic animals. LPWT aims to improve chronological resolution of Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer sites, and also to discover more sites from this period to examine similarities and contrasts in diet and economy.

Trained in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Asmara, Eritrea, and Stony Brook University, Ammanuel Beyin joined TBI in 2009 as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Before joining TBI, Beyin’s work was focused on the Red Sea Coast of Eritrea (his home country) where his team documented Early and Middle Holocene shell middens and Middle Stone Age surface occurrences in an a area that had seen little prior research. He worked on coastal fishing environments looking at the archaeological record for coastal fishing populations in Eritrea and is now contrasting these to adaptations of lake shore fishing people in northern Kenya.

Dr. Beyin’s research will focus on the early Holocene epoch, 10,000-7,000 years before present. With the onset of a globally wet climate during this time period, lakeshores, riverine settings, and seashores became increasingly important resources for humans in many parts of the world. Like many other East African lake basins, Lake Turkana became a mega-lake during this period, with abundant aquatic resources and lush grasslands for hunters and fishers to utilize. Through his archaeological investigation of western Turkana, Beyin hopes to clarify the role this region played in human survival in the early Holocene, the cultural contexts of human lakeshore adaptations in Africa, and the possible connections between the cultures of the Turkana Basin and those of the Sahara and Nile Valley during this time.