Talk:Savanna Pastoral Neolithic

Savanna Pastoral Neolithic

I'm pleased to see that the Pastoral Neolithic in eastern Africa is getting some Wikipedia attention these days. I have serious concerns about this article, however. For example, I don't know of any archaeologists who still refer to the "Stone Bowl Culture" as a recognizable entity. Other groups in eastern Africa made stone bowls as well - they are found on Elmenteitan sites, too, for example. There is zero archaeological evidence to support the idea that SPN peoples were farmers or even agropastoralists. All evidence shows that they were specialized pastoralists (which is what makes this archaeological time period so interesting, actually). There is also no way to determine that SPN peoples spoke a Cushitic language - the historical linguistics seem to suggest that maybe the people who built the Turkana megaliths were Cushitic, but this is far from certain. The entire discussion about SPN peoples being "Caucasoid" is also very dubious. I would really suggest that we work together to get real archaeological information on here - there is quite an extensive literature about the Pastoral Neolithic at this point, and perhaps I will start trying to incorporate that info into this article. Ninafundisha (talk) 04:18, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic was previously known as the "Stone Bowl Culture". It isn't anymore, so the page is now titled after the cultural complex's common name, the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic. That said, scholars believe that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic makers probably cultivated some grain alongside their archaeologically attested cattle; some of their stone bowls apparently have some carbonaceous matter on the walls. Ambrose's argument that other bowls were instead primarily used for grinding red ochre also makes sense. Per Christopher Ehret, it is fairly certain that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic people spoke Afro-Asiatic languages of the Cushitic branch. This is based on the material culture, funerary customs, and skeletal morphology of the cairn makers, as well as the temporal sequence of linguistic migrations into the region (Khoisan->Cushitic->Nilotic->Bantu), and loanwords. Only Cushitic populations fit the bill; this is the conventional interpretation among scholars ("Correlation of the Savanna PN "Stone Bowl Culture" with Southern Cushitic groups has been the orthodox interpretation for many years" [1]). In particular, the oldest cairns have been dated to well before any linguistically attested Nilotic migrations into the Great Lakes region; the dates are instead consistent with the arrival of the first Cushitic speakers. The morphology of the skeletons buried within the cairns also doesn't resemble that of Nilotic individuals, but instead that of prehistoric Egyptian populations (who spoke an Afro-Asiatic language). While the terminology used to describe the specimens is perhaps questionable ("Mediterranean Caucasoid", hence Ehret's use of quotation marks), the population affinities themselves and the archaeological study of the remains are not. Daniel Stiles, who most recently excavated their burials, actually helped set up the archaeological program at the University of Nairobi [2]. He notes that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic makers were likely ancestral to the Azanians of the Common Era, and that "the Azanians of the 1st to 4th century A.D. were no doubt Cushitic speakers, and their descendants and related immigrants from the north brought with them their traditions and funerary customs, some of which were passed on to the peoples living in Kenya at the time" [3] [4]. The controvesy is over the skeletal affinities of the earlier Eburran/Kenya Capsian hunter-gatherer culture makers. They were erroneously referred to as "Caucasoid" on the basis of some fragmentary remains, which subsequent analysis by Stanley H. Ambrose revealed actually belonged to a later, Neolithic cultural strata, and thus likely to the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic makers ("the Gamble's Cave burials actually overlay the Phase 5A horizon (L.S.B. Leakey, 1931: 117), and thus later than and unrelated to this horizon, and may not represent the Eburran physical type[...] Therefore, conventional dating evidence indicates that the Mediterranean Caucasoid physical type belongs to the Neolithic era" [5]). Ambrose and Ehret therefore suggest that an Eburran hunter-gather population already inhabited the area at the time of the arrival of the Cushitic Savanna Pastoral Neolithic people [6] [7]. Middayexpress (talk) 17:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

About the grain cultivation, archaeologists have never found a single shred of evidence for domesticated plants in eastern Africa prior to the Iron Age, despite intensive flotation efforts. All the macrobotanical remains found at PN sites are always wild. I haven't heard about the charred remains on the stone bowls, but until those remains can be tested in a lab somewhere are are proven to be domesticated grain, I think we should accept the overwhelming archaeological evidence that these people were specialized pastoralists (who likely relied on a wide range of wild plants). As far as the linguistics go, I think Ehret gives us some very important pieces of the puzzle, but again there is often no actual archaeological evidence to either corroborate or refute his assertions. Note that your quote about "conventional interpretation among scholars" only cites work done in the 1970s - we've come a long way since then. In any case, I don't have any problem with the idea that an Eburran population of hunter/gatherers existed prior to the SPN - same with the Kansyore. I really don't think there is much (if any) evidence for the "Azanian" connection with the SPN that Dan Stiles talks about, but I suppose it's possible? I just get concerned when these kinds of theories get posted as fact. Ninafundisha (talk) 20:03, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

The Azanian connection is attributed to Daniel Stiles rather than asserted in Wikipedia's voice, though it's not really a new theory. George P. Murdock well before him proposed that the Azanian civilization was the work of "Megalithic Cushites", and that the pillar tombs were built following Cushitic megalithic prototypes. This is still the most popular theory as to those monuments' construction [8]. There are similar, though often much larger structures throughout the Horn region to the north, so this seems plausible. In his large treatise on the age-grading system, Harold Fleming (1965) also suggests that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture was "genetically connected with, or derived at a minimum by a heavy diffusion from, the "A" and "C" groups of Nubia" [9]. This is consistent with Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst (2000), whose linguistic work indicates that the Kerma and C-Group of the Nile Valley peoples spoke Afro-Asiatic languages of the Cushitic and Berber branches, respectively [10]. Regarding the possibility of grain cultivation, I agree that it's uncertain. What exactly is the reported carbonaceous matter on the walls of some of the stone bowls, I'm not sure. Sonia Cole (1954) indicates that certain pestles and grindstones that she excavated were stained with red ochre, while others weren't. She consequently suggests that the latter were instead used for grinding grain. Middayexpress (talk) 22:50, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, why does "Pastoral Neolithic" redirect to "Savanna Pastoral Neolithic"? The "Pastoral Neolithic" refers to a general time period in eastern Africa that included a number of different archaeological "cultures" (the makers of "Nderit" pottery, for example, the Elmenteitan group, etc.). The "Savanna Pastoral Neolithic" is only a subset of the Pastoral Neolithic, and so I think this article should be reverted back to the title "Eastern African Pastoral Neolithic", and then we could include the SPN as a subsection. My two cents. Ninafundisha (talk) 04:28, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

"Pastoral Neolithic" re-directs here because it is a common shorthand for "Savanna Pastoral Neolithic". "Savanna Pastoral Neolithic" is the common name for the old Stone Bowl Culture, so that is what the page is titled per WP:COMMONNAME. Although it was contemporaneous with the later highland phase of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic, the Elmenteitan Culture is a seperate entity and its makers are believed to have been Nilotic [11]. Middayexpress (talk) 17:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I would respectfully disagree with this. I excavate, publish, and teach about SPN sites for a living, and neither me nor any of my colleagues use the term "Pastoral Neolithic" as shorthand for the SPN. The "Pastoral Neolithic" refers to the Neolithic in Africa, generally, beginning with the origins and development of pastoralism in what's now the Sahara. In eastern Africa, the "Pastoral Neolithic" refers to any of the pastoralist cultures that arrived prior to start of the Iron Age. I agree with you that the Elmenteitan is separate and possibly Nilotic, but we would still consider them part of the Pastoral Neolithic.Ninafundisha (talk) 19:33, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

As it is a separate cultural entity with apparently different makers, the Elmenteita culture should probably be dealt with on its own page. The Eburran industry as well. Middayexpress (talk) 22:50, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, I am heartened to see some real debate about eastern African archaeology on here. I am happy to email you pdfs of academic publications, I just can't post them on Wikipedia due to copyright issues. Let me know! Ninafundisha (talk) 19:33, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you; that is very generous. Middayexpress (talk) 22:50, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Cairns

The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic was restricted to the Great Lakes region; it wasn't found in other parts of eastern Africa. Archaeological dating of livestock bones and burial cairns has also established the culture as the earliest center of pastoralism (cattle, sheep and goats) and stone construction in that region. However, it isn't earlier than the pastoral cultures in the Horn region to the north (e.g. Laas Geel). Material culture, osteological analysis and linguistic reconstructions likewise all strongly indicate that the culture's makers were Cushitic. On the other hand, it is uncertain whether or not they cultivated grain. Middayexpress (talk) 18:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

First of all, I am totally baffled by your use of the term "Great Lakes region" - this is not commonly used in any academic discourse that I know of. We often talk about Pastoral Neolithic sites in the Great Rift Valley, or we talk about archaeological sites on the coast. I have never heard any scholar use the term "Great Lakes region" to refer to Kenya or Tanzania in general, unless you're specifically talking about areas surrounding Lake Victoria or the other lakes to the south. Lake Turkana is never spoken about in this way. It's confusing to the general reader, especially if there are other ways to refer to the geography more specifically. Second of all, there is quite a bit of disagreement about whether or not the early makers of Nderit pottery and the megaliths in the Turkana Basin were, in fact, the same people as the SPN farther south and later on. Stan Ambrose hypothesizes that they are, but there is actually no archaeological evidence to support that idea - the material culture is completely different, for example, as is the bioarchaeology. I attempted to email you the relevant publications, but you haven't responded. I deleted your statement about Dan Stile's earliest cairn date because it is erroneous - the megalithic "pillar sites" are now radiocarbon dated to earlier than 4500 BP. And seriously, why are you fighting me about the grains? That reference about sorghum and millet is not grounded in any archaeological reality. Neither is the idea that they had irrigation.Ninafundisha (talk) 20:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The Great Lakes region is a term for the part of East Africa where the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic is today actually found (e.g. [12]). It perhaps may not be as common in archaeology, but to the average lay reader, "East Africa" alone implies more than just that region. It therefore needs qualification, lest he or she get the misimpression that the culture was also found in the Horn region to the north rather than just likely diffused from there. I realize that the megaliths in Turkana may have been built by a different people. Lynch and Robbins, who "discovered" Namoratunga, associate it with Eastern Cushitic rather than Southern Cushitic speakers. To this end, Ehret (1983) and Spear (1980) note that linguistic evidence indicates that some Eastern Cushitic speakers, the original Yaaku, had also arrived in the area west of Lake Turkana by 1,000 B.C.. Eastern Cushitic loanwords related to food production in the Nilo-Saharan Kuliak language mark their arrival. The Yaaku term *yaakw for "cattle" entered proto-Kuliak as *eakw for "to herd" and proto-Eastern Nilotic as *yok for "to herd". Similarly, the generic pastoral terms for "cow" and "sheep" in Kuliak were adopted from Southern Cushitic speakers. Heine (1986) suggests that this indicates that the Cushites were the more proficient pastoralists. Other linguistic data suggests that a portion of the Yaakuans later moved into central Kenya, where they interacted with Khoisan-speaking peoples who gradually adopted their Cushitic language. Whether or not the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture makers' cultivated grain is uncertain. Besides the aforementioned carbonaceous material found in some of the bowls, grain cultivation can be inferred from the various agricultural loanwords of Southern Cushitic origin that are today found in the languages of later Bantu settlers in the Great Lakes area [13]. Regarding the ceramics, the controversy seems to be over whether the Azanian-associated Tana Tradition/Triangular Incised Ware was derived from the Cushitic-associated Savanna Pastoral Neolithic ware (as David Collett, George Abungu et al. argue), or whether it was derived from the Bantu-associated Mwitu/Early Iron Ware tradition (as Randi Haaland, Felix Chami et al. argue). At any rate, I wasn't aware of the redating of the megalithic pillar sites. That's very interesting because it would mean that these structures long predate the emergence of the Swahili culture. If you don't mind my asking, which ones were redated? You can send me the publications at hand through the blue email link on the far left hand side of my talkpage (under Tools). Regards, Middayexpress (talk) 22:15, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I sent you an email using the blue email link yesterday, but I cannot figure out how to attach files. Do you know how? Ninafundisha (talk) 03:37, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

If you can assist me with the file attachments, I will send you three articles. The first is a 2014 review of the Pastoral Neolithic by Paul Lane, which contains the best summary to date of what we know so far. I would note that most archaeologists who work in this region would disagree with grouping Nderit-making pastoralists as "SPN," but in any case, Paul's chapter is excellent. I will send you Grillo and Hildebrand's 2013 paper summarizing what we know so far about the Turkana sites (with the new dates), and I will also send you Fleisher and Wynne-Jones's 2011 paper summarizing what we know so far about Tana/TIW ceramics and the origins of the Swahili. I think you'll be surprised at how little attention is paid to the historical linguistics. I made a few small edits to reflect current archaeological consensus, which you have almost entirely rejected. Please provide a link to the primary data that shows carbonized grains in stone bowls, or evidence for irrigation. Otherwise, please at least think about accepting my changes. When I delete a sentence that says the oldest stone architecture in East Africa dates to 3400 BP because that sentence is factually wrong (as I noted in the edit summary), please accept those edits. I will work to provide additional links to peer-reviewed articles and recent books. But if you keep reversing all of my good-faith edits because you're simply not familiar with the current literature, I will be happy to quit and just leave this page to you. Ninafundisha (talk) 04:23, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the general literature, just not the particular papers you're alluding to. It's unfortunate that some archaeologists are not paying more attention to work by scholars in other fields since much of that research precludes their own assumptions. For instance, had they consulted genetic work in the Horn region to the north, they would understand that the Bantu presence there is quite recent, as there is no significant Bantu substratum influence. There was instead apparently some other autochthonous population at the time of the arrival of the first "Ethio-Somali" Afro-Asiatic speakers. This absorbed "Ethiopic" population's ancestry today peaks among the Ari ironworkers of Ethiopia, who speak an Omotic language (see Hodgson et al. 2014 [14]). This in turn challenges Chami (1999)'s three-phase Early Iron Age paradigm, which he associates with Bantu speakers. He suggests that his earliest Limbo ware phase (200 BC to 300 AD) is represented at Ras Hafun in far northern Somalia, where there is no Bantu genetic, cultural or linguistic substratum. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea instead indicates that "Berbers" (ancestral northern Cushitic groups) inhabited the area during that period [15]. At any rate, I of course have no objection to removing the assertion regarding the earliest stone construction if you can demonstrate that there are other structures of earlier archaeological date. I don't think attachments are possible through wiki's email function, but perhaps what you can do is upload them through docdroid.net and then email me those download links. Middayexpress (talk) 17:53, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Robert J. Braidwood (1945) touches on the carbonaceous matter that was found inside some of the stone bowls [16]:

"Peoples living in permanent, houses, practicing ceremonial group burial, and with other traits indicative of a settled food-producing community, were living in the grasslands of the Kenya Rift valley and in northern Tanganyika during the first millennium and certainly earlier Leakey, 1945; and Leakey, 1950). They had domestic cattle and sheep, but, while they made pottery, there is no conclusive evidence as yet of plant cultivation, though it may be suspected from the grinding and mulling equipment. The microlithic and flaked-stone element remains much the same as it was in times but is somewhat more impoverished by the falling-out of certain forms, and this points to the use of some other food source in addition to hunting. Their most characteristic piece of equipment is a shallow stone bowl of lava, sometimes with carbonaceous matter adhering to the inside, which was used, probably "since it is likely to have been of a utilitarian rather than a ceremonial nature" for cooking or roasting. It is suggested that whatever it was that was roasted in the bowls formed part of the staple food of this neolithic "stone-bowl culture," as it has been called. From the pestle stones that very often accompany the bowls, this food would seem to have been pounded before it was used." Middayexpress (talk) 17:53, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

You can download several recent articles on Academia.edu, including Fleisher's work on Swahili Coast ceramics. Grillo and Hildebrand's new papers on the Turkana Basin are posted as well. All articles are free, you just have to sign up. The Lane chapter can be read on Google Books - it's in Bollig et al's Pastoralism in Africa: Past, Present, and Future. Braidwood talking about East Africa is not primary data, and regardless, even if there were carbonized remains found in stone bowls, that by no means equals farming. Archaeologists don't "argue" that we have never found direct evidence for farming - it's not up for debate. Many have looked, and it is simply not there. Why Edwards and Whiting (neither of them archaeologists) are being cited to support your claims about the Pastoral Neolithic is beyond me. And for the record, every archaeologist I have ever met follows new research on genetics, and we believe it completely. Chami might be the exception. Ninafundisha (talk) 01:34, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

What Edwards and Whiting indicate is hardly novel. It is well-established amongst archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists that: 1) the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic toolkit was characterized by stone bowls and pestles, grindstones and earthenware pots (archaeology, Ambrose's field), 2) they may have been at least partly responsible for introducing the age-set system of social organization to the area (anthropology, Edwards and Whiting's field), and 3) they likely spoke an Afro-Asiatic language of the Cushitic branch (linguistics, Ehret's field). What is uncertain is whether or not the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic people practiced cultivation. I suppose all of the grinding and milling equipment could be attributed to some other non-agricultural activity, and it could perhaps also be argued that the carbonaceous matter inside some of the stone bowls was a wild rather than a cultivated crop(s). However, that wouldn't explain the calabash, Lagenaria vulgaris, that was found within at least one of the cairns ("The remains of calabashes, Lagenaria vulgaris, were found at the Njoro River Cave among remains of the Stone Bowl people dated to the beginning of the first millennium B.C. (Leakey and Leakey 1960: 38), and possibly at another Stone Bowl site at Ilkek (Brown 1966: 66)" [17]). It was likely cultivated for use as a bottle gourd. It's good, though, that some archaeologists are aware of developments outside of their own field. Besides genetics, they would do well to also consult linguistics; particularly the agricultural loanwords of South Cushitic origin that are found today in the languages of later settlers [18]. At any rate, thanks for Fleisher et al.. Regards, Middayexpress (talk) 18:57, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

We disagree about what constitutes "evidence" - what evidence could there be for age-sets in the archaeological record? What evidence could an anthropologist provide that would support that idea? There are also very few grindstones on PN sites compared to those typically found on agriculturalist sites, and there is no evidence for "milling" that I know of. Specialized pastoralists, who often do not cultivate grains, are known to produce and use pottery on a regular basis, as well as grow and use calabashes. I wouldn't argue that they don't. I would just argue that we should focus on including actual archaeological data on this page. Ninafundisha (talk) 20:41, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

That the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic people may have adhered to an age-set system is suggested by their other cultural affiliations (e.g. cairn building), which are strongly Cushitic. At any rate, there is only one phrase on agriculture ("based on the recovered materials, it has been hypothesized that the Stone Bowl peoples also practiced irrigation and cultivated grains such as millet, eleusine (savanna grass), and sorghum"). It doesn't say for a fact in Wikipedia's voice that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic people practiced agriculture, though the linguistic data for one certainly suggests that they did. Ambrose argues that since durra sorghum (which is almost exclusively associated with Afro-Asiatic speakers) isn't grown today by Southern Cushitic speakers, it likely wasn't in the past either. They instead purportedly grow caudatum sorghum and a hybrid caudatum/durra sorghum. However, this is not necessarily true since for instance in the Horn to the north, most Afro-Asiatic pastoralists today keep zebu humped cattle while ancient rock art clearly depicts long-horned humpless cattle [19]. Ambrose also appears to have been mistaken about the kind of sorghum agriculture practiced in the Great Lakes. As recently as the late 1960s, certain Southern Cushitic-speaking groups did apparently cultivate durra type sorghum; they also traditionally distinguished several different types of sorghum [20]:

"a. Sorghum, Sorghum spp.

It is called mangare in the Iraqw language. The Iraqw distinguish awaka and rangaranga. Their characteristics are as follows:

mangare - durra type, red grain

awaka - durra type, white grain

rangaranga - kafir type

The original meaning of awaka is white and rangaranga means upright. It is likely that mangare used to be the general appellation of sorghum. In Giting, only mangare is grown. The Gorowa raise awaka at the foot of Mt. Ufiome. The author observed that rangaranga is grown between Kondoa and Dodoma."

It's possible that by the time Ambrose wrote his paper in the 1980s, these groups had either switched entirely to the caudatum or hybrid sorghum types, or he was simply not fully aware of the varied kinds of sorghum cultivation that they practiced. The former seems more probable since by the late 1960s, the Iraqw were largely turning to maize cultivation ("before maize was introduced, the main crops of the Iraqw were sorghum, finger millet and pearl millet, which are inclusively called baran"). Middayexpress (talk) 19:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Use of an article by Stiles published in Kenya Airways' in-flight magazine

I posted this elsewhere so copying it here. @Middayexpress:, Stiles' work "The Azanian Civilization Revisited"was published in Msafiri[21] so not reliably published. "The Azanian Civilization and Megalithic Cushites Revisited" was published in "Kenya Past and Present" which is published by the Kenya Museum Society.[www.kenyamuseumsociety.org/] Searches on "Stiles, Daniel. "The Azanian Civilization" which would pick up both articles show nothing on GBooks or GScholar. His excavations were in or started in 1979 according to "The Azanian Civilization and Megalithic Cushites Revisited" so might have been for his PhD, but he was also lecturing in Kenya and setting up an archaeology program starting in 1977 so it might have been part of that."In 1977, I moved to Kenya to lecture in archaeology and set up the archaeology program at the University of Nairobi."[22] I haven't yet found the subject of his PhD. He hasn't done much if any archaeological work since getting his PhD. In other words, I don't think we should be using his work. WP:UNDUE and all that. Doug Weller talk 08:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)