Archaeologists are digging into the 1,800-year-old settlements and livestock camps of north-central Kenya to trace how herding societies adapted to past droughts and wet periods. The Pastoral Iron Age—the period after roughly 1200 CE when herders adopted iron tools, changed their mobility patterns, and shifted food production—has been largely neglected compared to the earlier Pastoral Neolithic. This matters because understanding how ancient pastoralists responded to climate shocks could explain the origins of today’s age-set systems and the long-term resilience of specialised livestock herding in a region prone to catastrophic droughts. The research will combine landscape survey, materials analysis, and studies of human and livestock mobility, diet, and exchange networks over the last 1,800 years. If successful, it will produce the first detailed archaeological picture of how these societies evolved through periods of climatic uncertainty. The project is primarily fundamental historical and archaeological research. It has no immediate practical application, but a deeper understanding of past pastoralist strategies could inform future planning for sustainable land use and food security in arid East African rangelands—systems that quietly support millions of people and livestock today.
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The origin of livestock herding in eastern Africa dates to around c. 5000 BP and entailed a combination of demic migration of new populations into the region pushed southward as a consequence of increasing aridity at the termination of the early-mid Holocene pluvial; diffusion of domesticates and cultural practices, including new forms of burial, settlement, lithic technologies and ceramic styles and forms; and acculturation of some autochthonous hunting-gathering-fishing communities. Known as the Pastoral Neolithic, this phase of initial establishment and subsequent expansion across eastern Africa has attracted extensive archaeological interest, stimulated by advances in bioarchaeological, biochemical and geoarchaeological research, and higher precision radiocarbon dating. The ensuing Pastoral Iron Age, commencing c. 1200 CE, with the uptake of iron smelting technologies among herding communities, new ceramic styles, reductions in mobility, and changes in food production, has received much less archaeological attention. Yet, understanding these transitions and the factors that gave rise to them are critical for understanding the origins of many of the region's contemporary pastoralist communities, key cultural systems such as age-sets, and the socio-ecological viability and resilience of specialised pastoralism in the context of climatic uncertainty and periodic catastrophic regional droughts. The goals of this research are i) to provide, for the first time, an archaeological landscape and materials analysis of the origins and evolution of Pastoral Iron Age societies in north-central Kenya, through integrated analysis of patterns of human and livestock mobility, dietary practices, exchange networks, and responses to periods of known drought and increased rainfall over the last c. 1800 years, and ii) demonstrate the value of understanding these pastoralist pasts as paths for planning more sustainable futures for the region's contemporary pastoralist societies.
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