CULTURAL ECOLOGY OF THE EAST AFRICAN SAVANNA ENVIRONMENT IN A LONG-TERM HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

AIMS OF THE PROJECT

The general aim of the project is to investigate the economical history of East Africa and the human impact on the environment in a historical perspective. The time bracket will be ca. 1400 – 1900, but we are also going to follow the processes up to the present situation.

We will carry out research within two case areas for comparison: an area around Lake Nakuru in the Central Rift Valley in Kenya and an area around Engaruka in northern Tanzania. In the Nakuru area there is an extensive site of Lanet which was inhabited by a large pastoral community. The site has been investigated preliminarily by Merrick Posnansky in 1957. We surveyed the site in 1996 and located more than 60 shallow depressions - most probably hut remains – and low heaps in between the depressions. There was also, in the middle section of the site, a defensive feature of some kind.

In Engaruka a large cultivation area, known already since the late-1800s, is situated: partly damaged cultivation installations (field terraces, irrigation channels, stone linings to control water flow, dams etc.), villages and different kinds of building constructions have been encountered and preliminarily investigated there. John Sutton has investigated extensively the site and produced a detailed map, and some excavations have been carried out there by Louis Leakey in 1938, Hamo Sassoon in 1964 and 1966, and Peter Robertshaw in 1982.

We intend to carry out excavations in Lanet and Engaruka. Our intention is to clarify the chronology for both sites and to obtain information about the utilisation of the sites, whether these settlements were expanding, stochastically shifting or rotating, or whether the entire areas were utilised simultaneously or different sections during different periods. This would give us some basis for understanding the economy, demography and intensity/extensity of human activities at both sites, and for reconstructing the settlement and ethnic sequences within the both areas.