Bone Harpoons From Selected Sites in the Lake Turkana Basin

Abstract

This work concern barbed bone harpoons from four Holocene fishing settlement sites in the Lake Turkana Basin. The harpoons are a component of the assemblages recovered by excavation. The study has been undertaken to find the significance of these tools in the assemblages and the relationship between harpoons from different fishing settlements. The first chapter present the project and hypothesis being tested. Second chapter discuss the palaeoenvironmental history of East and North Africa and the Lake Turkana Basin since the close of the pleistocene to the present. The third chapter discuss the Holocene 'archaeology of East and North Africa and Lake Turkana Basin. The fourth chapter present the geo-environmental setting, dating and artifactual contexts ot the four studied sites. The studied sites are Lothagam, Lovasera, GaJi 11 and GaJi 12. Chapter five concern the methods employed in analysing bone harpoons from the four sites. Chapter six is the analysis where description, comparison of harpoons and cultural reconstruction of harpoon culture dispersal into lake Turkana Basin are done. In chapter seven, the procedure and results of experimental work undertaken are presented. Finally, in chapter eight summary and conclusions are made. The harpoon culture reached the Lake Turkana basin from Ethiopia where it had reached from Zaire. In manufacturing harpoons there was need to select big straight fresh bones. The harpoons were made by the same people who vere in close contact.The people used the same technology of manufacturing. The semi-sedentary life shows there was intersite movement in the Turkana Basin.