The onset of the early Holocene wet phase ~12,000 years ago led humans in many parts of the world to intensify the use of aquatic resources. African sites representing this phenomenon are known along the Sahara, the Nile Valley, and by the eastern African lakes, which often feature evidence for complex fishing technology and reduced mobility. Whether these aquatic adaptations reflect niche broadening or a tight and specialized focus on aquatic resources is not yet clear, but the answer is vital to understand trajectories of cultural changes immediately before the introduction of food production. Lake Turkana in NW Kenya is a crucial setting where to investigate the causes and consequences of early Holocene aquatic intensification: it expanded enormously during this period, creating new niches for hunter-gatherer-fishers (HGF) to exploit. Fieldwork in the 1970s documented several HFG sites. However, questions remained about their ecological, temporal and cultural framework as most of them lacked reliable radiometric dates and in-depth paleoenvironmental analyses. A better understanding of these issues is critical to establishing the interface(s) of foraging groups with the first herders that introduced domestic livestock ~5000 years ago, the earliest event in entire East Africa. Interactions between HGF and early herders (EH) are a complex process, where food security, material cultural and ideological world together created boundaries and frontiers. The project will investigate these themes by means of intensive geoarchaeological surveys and excavations of a crucial contex in SE Lake Turkana, Lowasera, where early foragers and first herders are both recorded. The fieldwork will cover the region around Lowasera, targeting in particular for: i) the reconstruction of the Holocene lake variations; ii) mapping and selected excavation of funerary stone monuments; iii) mapping and analysis of rock art contexts; iv) sampling and genetic studies of present Turkana groups.
The project represents an innovative approach to the study of the cultural interaction(s) between foragers and herders in the area. As briefly synthesised before, in fact, for the first time in the region, environmental, cultural, symbolic and biological data will be analysed with an interdisciplinary approach based on a sound theoretical and methodological background that gave outstanding results on our similar research topics elsewhere in Africa.
The application of cutting-edge methods in the field of archaeological, paleoenvironmental and geomorphological research (e.g. remote sensing, GIS, digital recording, chronometric dating) as well as in anthropological, biological and genetic studies (isotope studies, analysis of faunal and botanical remains, aDNA etc) will gave new insights to the cultural, symbolic and biological trajectories of the different groups that inhabited the region during the Early and Middle Holocene. The research will also open a new scenario on timing and intensity of cultural interactions, both on a local and interregional scale.
The strong background of knowledge in cultural, symbolic and biological and genetic trajectories of early and middle Saharan and North African communities - that our research team built in nearly 30 years of research - will give indeed an important insight into the investigation of the trans-regional interactions of Turkana "aqualithic" and pastoral communities with the northern communities proposed since the 1970s (e.g. Sutton 1977; Keding 2017).
Another significant improvement of this project is the integrated approach that will characterize also the study of rock art evidence. Rock art in the region has been in fact scarcely investigated and poorly understood. The few previous studies were descriptive and lacked interpretation of the cultural and chronological framework (Odak 1976, 1977; Lynch & Robbins 1979; Russell & Kiura 2011). We propose instead a contextual analysis of rock art evidence aimed at defining its relationships with the geomorphological settings, and the other archaeological features, in order to reconstruct its social-cultural context. This will could add important insights in the reconstruction of symbolic world of the first herders inhabited the region, and possibly of the foragers' communities.
We would also stress the large support of Italian Cooperation and Kenyan Institutions, in particular, the National Museums of Kenya, that has granted all the needed permissions to access and investigated the research areas. Furthermore, this cooperation will favour specific projects in the field of the preservation and management of the Cultural Heritage in the area, as well as to the development of training programmes, with also the involvement of local communities. These issues have always characterised the activities of our research team and are an essential condition for any archaeological research in Africa today.