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Nkope: The Early Ironworking Pottery Tradition of Southern Coastal Tanzania

Nkope: The Early Ironworking Pottery Tradition of Southern Coastal Tanzania This paper discusses Early Ironworking (EIW) pottery traditions of the southern coast of Tanzania. The beginning of the trend toward settled village communities in large parts of southeastern Africa was assumed to result from the southward movements of Bantu speakers who are presumed to have introduced the earliest evidence of domestication and sedentary behaviour, as well as iron- and pottery-making skills. The corollary of this was that the earliest settled villages of the coast were considered to have been of the Kwale tradition, which is a coastal variant of EIW ceramics that dates from the third and fourth centuries ad on the northern and central coasts of eastern Africa. Recent studies on the southern coast of Tanzania have revealed an EIW pottery tradition with a strong resemblance to the Nkope tradition of the southwestern interior, corresponding to the woodland belt on the southern edge of the equatorial forest zone. The temporal pattern of this tradition does not suggest any direction of movement but rather an axis of interactions between the coast and interior, at least since the last millennium bc. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png African Archaeological Review Springer Journals

Nkope: The Early Ironworking Pottery Tradition of Southern Coastal Tanzania

African Archaeological Review , Volume 30 (2) – May 31, 2013

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References (40)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Springer Science+Business Media New York
Subject
Social Sciences, general; Archaeology; Anthropology; Regional and Cultural Studies
ISSN
0263-0338
eISSN
1572-9842
DOI
10.1007/s10437-013-9132-5
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This paper discusses Early Ironworking (EIW) pottery traditions of the southern coast of Tanzania. The beginning of the trend toward settled village communities in large parts of southeastern Africa was assumed to result from the southward movements of Bantu speakers who are presumed to have introduced the earliest evidence of domestication and sedentary behaviour, as well as iron- and pottery-making skills. The corollary of this was that the earliest settled villages of the coast were considered to have been of the Kwale tradition, which is a coastal variant of EIW ceramics that dates from the third and fourth centuries ad on the northern and central coasts of eastern Africa. Recent studies on the southern coast of Tanzania have revealed an EIW pottery tradition with a strong resemblance to the Nkope tradition of the southwestern interior, corresponding to the woodland belt on the southern edge of the equatorial forest zone. The temporal pattern of this tradition does not suggest any direction of movement but rather an axis of interactions between the coast and interior, at least since the last millennium bc.

Journal

African Archaeological ReviewSpringer Journals

Published: May 31, 2013

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