Reves Center for International Studies Events
[PAST EVENT] Anthropology Talk: "Landscape of the Hunter-Gatherers," Décio Muianga
Mozambican Stone Age (SA) remains poorly explored and its archaeological heritage is still largely explained in terms of better-known sequences of other southern African countries. Southern Mozambique has very few rock shelter sites with archaeological evidences related to hunter-gatherers. The lithic assemblages from DAIM I and DAIM II rock-shelters located, in Changalane Administrative Post (Namaacha District, Maputo Province) becomes, apart from the rock art, one of the few sources of explanation of the use of the rock shelters in the area. Lithic analysis and radiocarbon dating show that formal tools were produced or used in the area, as part of the hunting and gathering way of life. Rock paintings that are aspects of symbolic behaviour of foragers is also present in DAIM I, which marked their passage and represents a unique archaeological sequence of chronological and symbolic events during the Holocene. To build an understanding of the SA sequence of the area, this project considers the sequence of the occupation of the sites based on the typological and chronological features recognized on the lithic and other artefacts. Diagnostic cultural material from the two rock shelters strongly suggests a continuity of the hunter-gatherer presence from the Early Stone age until the first millennium AD, and also maintenance of the Later Stone Age (LSA) of lifestyle in the Lebombo Mountain range in southern interior and coastal Mozambique. Please email [[jdcarlson]] if you would like a Zoom option.