Ethno archaeological investigations on domestic stock age spectra from pastoral Neolithic sites in Kenya

Abstract

This study is designed to address an interpretive problem that has arisen during the study of animal bones from Pastoral Neolithic sites in Kenya. A solution to this problem, it is suggested, could be obtained through an ethnoarchaeological study of the formation of animal bone assemblages on contemporary pastoral settlements.

Pastoral Neolithic age mortality structures of domestic faunal assemblages from sites in South-Western and the Central Rift Valley of Kenya show significant differences from those the ethnographic literature suggests are created (Marshall 1986). Questions then arise whether the patterns in Pastoral Neolithic faunal assemblages are as a result of Neolithic herd management and subsistence practices that differ from the contemporary ones; or whether those patterns were brought about by bone discard and post discard destructive processes which create

archaeological age profiles that differ

from those created

through human culling practices. The objective of t.i.s study is to explore factors affecting the formation of archaeological sites and the preservation of animal bones. Specifically, a study of the factors that affect the age structure of domestic faunal remains found on contemporary pastoral Maasai settlements lS done. Subsequently, these factors and processes are interpreted to offer generalizations and hypotheses that could explain, and predict certain age structures shown In domestic faunal assemblages from Pastoral Neolithic sites in Kenya.Using the information and inferences from the Kuku Plain on current herd structures and mortality patterns, it is argued that in some instances differential discard and post-discard taphonomic processes may not determine faunal age distribution. Instead, the mortality patterns that would affect a herd are the same patterns that one would expect in a faunal and potential archaeological sample. Higher rates of mortality affect the adult or reproductively active animals (rates which are mostly undesired) whilst lower rates of mortality affect old animals. The fewer or more the age category in the live herd, the fewer or more they are represented within that given category in the archaeological record.