Evidence for Predation and Pastoralism at Prolonged Drift: a Pastoral Neolithic Site in Kenya

Summary

This important paper offers a fresh and stimulating approach to the interpretation of a large faunal assemblage from an excavated site. There are interesting implications in regard to present-day land use—an aspect of archaeology to which too little attention has been paid. The principal author, Dr Gifford is Assistant Professor in The Board of Studies in Anthropology, University of California.

This paper reports in detail on the largest faunal assemblage yet analysed from a Pastoral Neolithic site. Prolonged Drift, located south of Lake Nakuru, Kenya, yielded over 160,000 pieces of bone, reflecting a mixture of wild and domestic species in one midden deposit. A substantial part of our discussion centres on the possible economic systems and practices that may have existed in the Central Rift during the first and second millennia B.C.