Browsing by Author "Rubaka, Charles Chiramoto"

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    Pastoral Neolothic settlement and subsistence patterns in the Mag'ola Graben, Tanzania.
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2002) Rubaka, Charles Chiramoto
    This thesis is about Pastoral Neolithic (PN) settlement-subsistence patterns in the Mang'ola Graben. Mang'ola Graben is within the Eyasi Basin, Karatu District, Arusha Region in Tanzania. This research examines human behavioral systems involved in ecological adaptations of pre-historic societies between 7000 by and 1300 bp. Major objectives have been to identify the spatio-temporal distributions and variations of PN societies and their ecological adaptations; and to determine the age of PN cultures in the Mang'ola Graben. The hypotheses were that PN communities were either leading a sedentary way of life or they were transhumants enjoying a variety of subsistence regimes. Ecological and cultural evolutionary theories as well as comparative approaches have been employed in the study. The research reveals that PN communities in the Mang'ola Graben were transhumants, migrating between relatively fixed seasonal settlements; that is, the Lake Eyasi plains during dry seasons and to the rock shelters during the rainy seasons. They subsisted on wild and domestic resources in a pattern where wild fauna is slightly higher than domestic fauna. Such PN cultural behaviour is broadly the same as that of the Serengeti Plains, but different from that of Western Kenya and the Horn of Africa. On the Serengeti, the transhumant model relied heavily on wild game, while the peripatetic model of southwestern Kenya relied heavily on domestic stock and the transhumant model of the horn of Africa depended mostly on plant food.