EARLY PASTORALISTS IN EAST-AFRICA - ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS

This article discusses the development of economies based on nonindige nous domestic cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys in eastern Africa from the Lake Turkana basin south. It specifically addresses a previously noted delay of over a millennium in development of pastoral economies in the region. It argues that this lag could have been caused by novel epizootiological challenges encountered by pastoralists who had thriv ed in the Lake Turkana basin during the 5th millennium B.P. as they mo ved south into the Central Rift of Kenya. It reads the archaeofaunas, lithics, and ceramics in early ''Neolithic'' sites in Kenya and Tanzan ia as responses by immigrating pastoral groups and indigenous hunter-g atherers to an exceptionally dynamic environment, in which both climat ic and veterinary factors made intergroup social alliances and exchang e crucial. (C) 1998 Academic Press.