Browsing by Author "Ndiema, Emmanuel"

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    Entwined African and Asian genetic roots of medieval peoples of the Swahili coast
    (Springer Nature, 2023) Brielle, Esther S.; Fleisher, Jeffrey; Wynne-Jones, Stephanie; Sirak, Kendra; Broomandkhoshbacht, Nasreen; Callan, Kim; Curtis, Elizabeth; Iliev, Lora; Lawson, Ann Marie; Oppenheimer, Jonas; Qiu, Lijun; Stewardson, Kristin; Workman, J. Noah; Zalzala, Fatma; Ayodo, George; Gidna, Agness O.; Kabiru, Angela; Kwekason, Amandus; Mabulla, Audax Z. P.; Manthi, Fredrick K.; Ndiema, Emmanuel; Ogola, Christine; Sawchuk, Elizabeth; Al-Gazali, Lihadh; Ali, Bassam R.; Ben-Salem, Salma; Letellier, Thierry; Pierron, Denis; Radimilahy, Chantal; Rakotoarisoa, Jean-Aimé; Raaum, Ryan L.; Culleton, Brendan J.; Mallick, Swapan; Rohland, Nadin; Patterson, Nick; Mwenje, Mohammed Ali; Ahmed, Khalfan Bini; Mohamed, Mohamed Mchulla; Williams, Sloan R.; Monge, Janet; Kusimba, Sibel; Prendergast, Mary E.; Reich, David; Kusimba, Chapurukha M.
    The urban peoples of the Swahili coast traded across eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean and were among the first practitioners of Islam among sub-Saharan people1,2. The extent to which these early interactions between Africans and non-Africans were accompanied by genetic exchange remains unknown. Here we report ancient DNA data for 80 individuals from 6 medieval and early modern (ad 1250–1800) coastal towns and an inland town after ad 1650. More than half of the DNA of many of the individuals from coastal towns originates from primarily female ancestors from Africa, with a large proportion—and occasionally more than half—of the DNA coming from Asian ancestors. The Asian ancestry includes components associated with Persia and India, with 80–90% of the Asian DNA originating from Persian men. Peoples of African and Asian origins began to mix by about ad 1000, coinciding with the large-scale adoption of Islam. Before about ad 1500, the Southwest Asian ancestry was mainly Persian-related, consistent with the narrative of the Kilwa Chronicle, the oldest history told by people of the Swahili coast3. After this time, the sources of DNA became increasingly Arabian, consistent with evidence of growing interactions with southern Arabia4. Subsequent interactions with Asian and African people further changed the ancestry of present-day people of the Swahili coast in relation to the medieval individuals whose DNA we sequenced.
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    Iron Age hunting and herding in coastal eastern Africa: ZooMS identification of domesticates and wild bovids at Panga ya Saidi, Kenya
    (Elsevier, 2021) Culley, Courtney; Janzen, Anneke; Brown, Samantha; Prendergast, Mary E.; Shipton, Ceri; Ndiema, Emmanuel; Petraglia, Michael D.; Boivin, Nicole; Crowther, Alison
    The morphological differentiation of African bovids in highly fragmented zooarchaeological assemblages is a major hindrance to reconstructing the nature and spread of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa. Here we employ collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), coupled with recently published African ZooMS reference datasets, to identify domesticates and wild bovids in Iron Age assemblages at the cave site of Panga ya Saidi in southeast Kenya. Through ZooMS we have identified all three major African livestock—sheep (Ovis aries), goat (Capra hircus) and cattle (Bos taurus)—at the site for the first time. The results provide critical evidence for the use of domesticates by resident foraging populations during the Iron Age, the period associated with the arrival of food production in coastal Kenya. ZooMS results show that livestock at Panga ya Saidi form a minor component of the assemblage compared to wild bovids, demonstrating the persistence of hunting and the secondary role of acquiring livestock in hunter-gatherer foodways during the introduction of agro-pastoralism. This study sheds new light on the establishment of food production in coastal eastern Africa, particularly the role of interactions between hunter-gatherers and neighbouring agro-pastoral groups in what was a protracted regional transition to farming.
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    The Middle to Later Stone Age transition at Panga ya Saidi, in the tropical coastal forest of eastern Africa
    (Elsevier, 2021) Shipton, Ceri; Blinkhorn, James; Archer, Will; Kourampas, Nikolaos; Roberts, Patrick; Prendergast, Mary E.; Curtis, Richard; Herries, Andy I.R.; Ndiema, Emmanuel; Boivin, Nicole; Petraglia, Michael D.
    The Middle to Later Stone Age transition is a critical period of human behavioral change that has been variously argued to pertain to the emergence of modern cognition, substantial population growth, and major dispersals of Homo sapiens within and beyond Africa. However, there is little consensus about when the transition occurred, the geographic patterning of its emergence, or even how it is manifested in the stone tool technology that is used to define it. Here, we examine a long sequence of lithic technological change at the cave site of Panga ya Saidi, Kenya, that spans the Middle and Later Stone Age and includes human occupations in each of the last five Marine Isotope Stages. In addition to the stone artifact technology, Panga ya Saidi preserves osseous and shell artifacts, enabling broader considerations of the covariation between different spheres of material culture. Several environmental proxies contextualize the artifactual record of human behavior at Panga ya Saidi. We compare technological change between the Middle and Later Stone Age with on-site paleoenvironmental manifestations of wider climatic fluctuations in the Late Pleistocene. The principal distinguishing feature of Middle from Later Stone Age technology at Panga ya Saidi is the preference for fine-grained stone, coupled with the creation of small flakes (miniaturization). Our review of the Middle to Later Stone Age transition elsewhere in eastern Africa and across the continent suggests that this broader distinction between the two periods is in fact widespread. We suggest that the Later Stone Age represents new short use-life and multicomponent ways of using stone tools, in which edge sharpness was prioritized over durability.