The African Humid Period: Human Socio-cultural Responses - a view from the Turkana Basin, East Africa

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• Dr Amanuel Beyin, University of Louisville
• Monday 10 March 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Garrod Seminar Room, MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact akm73.

The final phase of the Pleistocene epoch in Africa was marked by the onset of a climatic phenomenon called the African Humid Period (AHP), which lasted c. 15.0–5.5 kya. Emerging paleoclimatic studies demonstrate multiple climatic swings between humid episodes and dry spells throughout this period. African hunter-gatherer communities of the time are known to have exploited riverine and lacustrine habitats and others lived in lush landscapes away from the waterbodies. For several decades, Africanist archaeologists have sought to elucidate the adaptive strategies people developed to cope with the prevailing ecological conditions of the AHP and the socio-cultural consequences of those adaptations. Based on the author’s recent work in west Lake Turkana (northern Kenya), this lecture will discuss hunter-gatherer-fisher settlements dating to the AHP and associated adaptive behaviors. Lake Turkana is one of the East African lakes that saw a marked expansion of their water-level during the AHP . This, coupled with its sensitivity to fluctuations in precipitation, makes it an ideal place to examine human adaptive responses during the ensuing and ending of the AHP . Participants are asked to reflect on the feasibility of the proposition that human engagement with diverse shoreline settings during the AHP may have facilitated cultural (and linguistic) diversification over time.

This talk is part of the African Archaeology Group Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• African Archaeology Group Seminar Series
• Garrod Seminar Room, MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

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