Department of Archaeology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
PLoS One. 2021 Aug 26;16(8):e0256761. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256761. eCollection 2021.
The antiquity and nature of coastal resource procurement is central to understanding human evolution and adaptations to complex environments. It has become increasingly apparent in global archaeological studies that the timing, characteristics, and trajectories of coastal resource use are highly variable. Within Africa, discussions of these issues have largely been based on the archaeological record from the south and northeast of the continent, with little evidence from eastern coastal areas leaving significant spatial and temporal gaps in our knowledge. Here, we present data from Panga ya Saidi, a limestone cave complex located 15 km from the modern Kenyan coast, which represents the first long-term sequence of coastal engagement from eastern Africa. Rather than attempting to distinguish between coastal resource use and coastal adaptations, we focus on coastal engagement as a means of characterising human relationships with marine environments and resources from this inland location. We use aquatic mollusc data spanning the past 67,000 years to document shifts in the acquisition, transportation, and discard of these materials, to better understand long-term trends in coastal engagement. Our results show pulses of coastal engagement beginning with low-intensity symbolism, and culminating in the consistent low-level transport of marine and freshwater food resources, emphasising a diverse relationship through time. Panga ya Saidi has the oldest stratified evidence of marine engagement in eastern Africa, and is the only site in Africa which documents coastal resources from the Late Pleistocene through the Holocene, highlighting the potential archaeological importance of peri-coastal sites to debates about marine resource relationships.
沿海资源获取的古老性和本质是理解人类进化以及对复杂环境适应的核心。全球考古学研究越来越明显的是，沿海资源利用的时间、特征和轨迹具有高度的可变性。在非洲，这些问题的讨论主要基于该大陆南部和东北部的考古记录，而来自东部沿海地区的证据很少，这使得我们的知识存在明显的空间和时间上的差距。在这里，我们展示了来自潘加亚萨伊迪（Panga ya Saidi）的数据，这是一个位于肯尼亚现代海岸 15 公里处的石灰岩洞穴群，代表了东非首次进行的沿海参与长期序列。我们没有试图区分沿海资源利用和沿海适应，而是将沿海参与作为一种手段，从这个内陆地点来描述人类与海洋环境和资源的关系。我们使用过去 67000 年来的水生软体动物数据来记录这些材料的获取、运输和丢弃的变化，以更好地了解长期的沿海参与趋势。我们的研究结果表明，从低强度的象征主义开始，出现了一系列的沿海参与，最终是稳定的、低水平的海洋和淡水食物资源的运输，强调了随着时间的推移而多样化的关系。潘加亚萨伊迪拥有东非最古老的分层海洋参与证据，也是非洲唯一一个记录了从更新世晚期到全新世的沿海资源的遗址，这突显了沿海遗址在探讨海洋资源关系方面的潜在考古重要性。
