This project's central goal is to discover the processes through which hunting-gathering people who lived just south of the Zambesi River either culturally transformed themselves into livestock-herders and cultivators, or were replaced by immigrant human groups between 2,500 and 1,500 years ago. This sort of cultural transition occurred throughout the world at different times, but the pace and actual economic and technological developments involved in such a dramatic change are very poorly known for most of sub-Saharan Africa. Zimbabwe itself is one of the outstanding gaps on the map of hunter-gatherer archaeology in southern Africa.
The project will explore archaeological and paleoenvironmental clues about the last centuries before the transformation, by sampling three sources of evidence in Hwange National Park, northwestern Zimbabwe: (1) Later Stone Age rockshelters with abundant stone tools and organic remains in undisturbed sediments will be excavated; (2) well preserved layers of ancient charcoal deeply buried in relict (stabilized) dunes of Kalahari sands will be cored and sampled; and (3) ancient peat deposits will be cored and sampled in former marshes to recover pollen, phytoliths, and spores from plants that once grew there.
The rockshelter excavations will recover direct evidence for sequential changes in stone-tool technology and diets of Later Stone Age foragers about 2,000-2,500 years ago. The charcoal sampling from dune sediments will allow for an interpretation of changing woodland communities over time and also indicate the fire history of the region, including possibly human-set fires over the last 2,000 years. The peat-deposit sampling will recover the microscopic traces of vegetation and may reveal the first presence of livestock herds.
The sharing of knowledge about past biotic and climatic changes will aid the project partners, Zimbabwe's National Museums and Monuments and the National Parks Authority, in planning the conservation and interpretation of cultural and natural heritage sites, and assist in planning for future climate-change effects on resources. The project will contribute to international capacity-building in southern Africa by providing research opportunities to students at the University of Zimbabwe and the collaborating heritage managers of Zimbabwe's National Museums and Monuments. The project will integrate research and learning at the University of Nevada-Reno, and further internationalize its anthropology programs.
The project's archaeological results will have significance when addressing the issue of whether the first appearance of farming was a gradual evolution or a revolution south of the Zambesi River. Evidence about the Zimbabwean processes of change from foraging to farming could help explain similar transformations of cultures and landscapes in other parts of Africa and the world, and help establish a model for understanding a major cultural-evolutionary step in human impacts on global environments.
