This past summer I joined a team of archaeologists to photograph their research work investigating old settlement mounds stretching along the edge of a floodplain in southern Zambia. Three professors are leading the work, including Kate de Luna, from Georgetown University, who facilitated my participation. Altogether there were about 20 who travelled to the remote site for the month of July, including the lead professors, several specialists in different areas of archaeology, staff from Zambia’s Livingstone Museum, and undergraduates from the US and Zambia. The trip was the latest in a series of visits the team has made in the last 10 years or so.
The team’s project is called the Bantu Mobility Project. They are examining archaeological and linguistic traces that are related to a large-scale African migration known as the Bantu Expansion – the migration over thousands of years of peoples who spread the roots of their Bantu language, as well as their iron age culture, from central Africa to most of southern and eastern Africa. The project’s main excavation is a 6-meter square pit (about 18 by 18 feet) at one of the settlement mounds, in Mwanamaimpa. The Mwanamaimpa mound is about 15 feet high by hundreds of feet in length. The team estimates that the artifacts they are uncovering as they dig down through layers are from humans living at the site from about 600 to 1,600 years ago. A field team is also digging many small pits in a large grid (15 km by 18 km) that includes the Mwanamaimpa mound and another abandoned settlement mound in Basanga. These small pits are the source of additional scattered artifacts that are helping the team understand the extent of ancient settlement across the wider survey area.
The team stays in six or seven local family compounds in Basanga, about a 20-minute drive over dirt tracks from the Mwanamaimpa mound. The compounds are in a rural area, connected to each other by short paths – surrounded by fields and flood plain and criss-crossed by cattle paths. Each compound belongs to a family that has agreed to house several of the team, usually vacating one or more or their simple structures to make room for their visitors. The compounds have no electricity or running water. Furniture is minimal – usually just a stool or bench to sit on. Water is fetched in buckets from a community bore-hole a few minutes walk away. The team gathers for meals and socializes in an open structure in the largest compound. Local women prepare meals in an open-air kitchen close by. The host families cook their own meals over simple fires on the ground – a few logs in the fire arranged to support a cooking pot. Each compound has an outhouse close by.
The local families support themselves with small gardens and field crops grown during the wet season. Chicken is the main protein. Each compound has a complement of chickens. Scores of roosters can be heard crowing back and forth across the surrounding landscape starting at about 4 o’clock in the morning. It appears to be a subsistence lifestyle for most, with cattle being the primary way wealth is accumulated. Basanga has a local clinic and a little cluster of shops. Mwanamaimpa has a small primary school where I interviewed the head teacher. It consists of two classrooms and two teachers to support over 300 young students (three shifts of classes during the day). Older students wanting education beyond the primary school must walk to higher-level schools that are 10 km (6 miles) away.
This post is the first of several I’ll share that show the archaeological project and some of the local people I encountered.
After a few initial days of getting oriented and purchasing supplies in Livingstone, at the southern border of Zambia near Victoria Falls, we head out on a day-long drive to Basanga. Kate de Luna, from Georgetown University, is one of three lead professors on the Bantu Mobility Project. Jack and Joseph are undergraduate students at Georgetown. A view of the main compound in Basanga, one of a group of family compounds where approximately 20 members of the team stay in accommodations provided by local families. The open structure on the left is where meals are served. The structure just beyond on the left is where local women prepare meals and heat water for bathing.This view of the main compound shows several structures on the right used for sleeping quarters. The structures are simple, with mud-coated walls, smoothed and painted. There is no electricity or running water. The small thatch enclosures on the left provide privacy for open-air bathing using buckets of water heated over fires. The source of water is a community bore hole and hand pump several minutes walk away. In the mornings local women who do the cooking for the team make a number of trips for water that is used for cooking, drinking, and bathing. When you want to take a bucket bath in one of the open-air enclosures these are the women that kindly heat the water for you.This is the open structure that is use for food preparation and cooking. Cooking pots are balanced on small wood fires on the ground. Breakfast is typically eggs with soft rolls, peanut butter and jam. Lunch and dinner is cooked cabbage, greens, chicken (occasionally fish), and nsima. The latter is ground corn cooked into a consistency that is thick enough so you can form a portion in your hand for scooping food. July is one of the relatively cold months in Zambia, which is south of the equator. These boys are huddling by a fire next to the kitchen in the early morning. The morning temperatures might be as low as the high 40s (Fahrenheit), but it warms up to around 70 later in the day. Even when the temperatures are in the 70s, though, locals sometimes feel the need to wear winter jackets and hoods. These are some of the kids from several related families in the cluster of compounds where the team stays. They are creative in their play-making, playing versions of jacks and building wire-framed cars. The older kids played pool on small-scale hand-made pool table using marbles and smooth sticks. This is the main excavation site at an old settlement mound in Mwanamaimpa. The excavation will ultimately be 6 meters (18 feet) square and about 15 feet deep. It is being dug in stages with each season of field work. In this photograph a series of steps leads down through the initial quadrant that had been dug. By the end of this past summer’s work half of the site had been dug out to a depth of about 8 or 9 feet. A large tree reaches over the top of the Mwanamaimpa mound. The mound is several hundred feet long. As with other mounds in the area, it is a few minutes walk from water in the adjacent flood plain. The soil on the mound is dark and rich compared to the surrounding sandy soils, the result of centuries of settlement.Another quadrant of the excavation is being carefully dug out. A few inches of soil at a time is scraped off with flat-bladed shovels or adzes and loaded into buckets for transferring to sieve frames. Areas of soil that have specific characteristics are identified as “contexts”. The artifacts are segregated and bagged by context number.Jeff Fleisher, in the light hat, shows some of the undergrads how to carefully scrape the excavation floor with archaeological trowels. When the flat-bladed shovels expose something of interest the shovels are set aside and the trowels come out. Millimeters of soil are removed instead of inches.Mirriam, a student from the University of Zambia in Lusaka, carefully looks through soil that has been dumped into a sieve frame. All of the soil coming out of the excavation is put in one of these frames, with 4 millimeter-spaced wire cloth separating potential items of interest. Mirriam and her sieve partner, Hildegard, were one of 5 or 6 teams at work that examined every bit of soil that came out of the site.Grace and Isabel, undergraduates from Rice University, pore over the remains of a batch of soil in their sieve frame. After a bucket of soil is poured into the frame the partners vigorously shift the frame back and forth with a motion that results in most of the loose soil falling into a pile beneath the frame. The sieve frame is then set on small posts so the contents can be examined. Small artifacts from this site are separated into bags of pottery, bone, beads, structure remains, and metal – and labeled according to the context number.Jeff Fleisher, a professor of archaeology at Rice University, is one of the lead researchers of the Bantu Mobility Project. He has managed the excavation at the Mwanamaimpa mound over several seasons. Here he is reflecting on what the team has uncovered during this season of digging. Lines carved into the walls of the excavation trace the boundaries of “contexts” that Jeff has identified as the digging progressed. Each context represents some identifying characteristic – an area that might have been the floor of a structure or hearth, or perhaps a change in the shade of the soil. Context boundaries are mapped out out on paper throughout the digging. The cavities in the wall behind Jeff are from samples of soil that have been removed and will be analyzed at a lab in England. Jeff uses a small notebook to record notes as the digging progresses. Here, on one of the pages, he has diagrammed the numerous contexts that he has identified in a way that shows spatial relationships as the contexts get deeper in the excavation. The branches of the large tree that’s adjacent to the excavation site frames the activity around the pit. Teams around the perimeter of the pit work at sieve frames, shaking the excavated soil through the wire mesh like big flour sifters. A group of local men relax on a pile of soil spoils adjacent to the excavation. They’ve been hired to help with the digging and sieving. The people living in the compounds around the Mwanamaimpa mound depend on agriculture and fishing for what appears to be a subsistence lifestyle. There is little or no employment for locals, so the opportunity to earn money from the excavation project is valuable.One of local men helping with the digging and sieving poses for a portrait at the excavation site.Each day the team pauses for a lunch made largely from the food it brings or buys on site. Local folks bring chickens for sale in the morning, which typically leads to several minutes of good-natured haggling over the price for the hens. The excavation site also attracts the regular attention of kids coming home from the local primary school. They walk up to the top of the mound to get a look at how the dig is progressing, and maybe to say hi to a father or relative who is working at the site.For the lunch break the team walks a few hundred feet from the mound (in the background of this photo) to the compound of a local headwoman who has agreed to provide cooks and a space to relax and eat in the shade.The mid-day meal adjacent to the excavation site consists of pots of cooked cabbage, greens, nsima (thick boiled corn meal), and chicken. Cats and a local dog or two command a lot of interest. Isabel and Margo, both from Rice University are seated on the left. Kenneth, a lecturer at the University of Zambia; Joseph, from Georgetown; and Jeff Fleisher, from Rice, are seated on the right.Part of the work of the project is a survey of a broad area (15 km by 18 km) surrounding the old settlement mounds – to check for clues of settlement patterns beyond the mounds. Matthew Pawlowicz, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, is one of the three lead researchers of the Bantu Mobility Project. Here he is talking with Isabel, an undergraduate from Rice University, about using a GPS device to find locations he has marked for digging the small test pits used in the survey. At one of the survey test pits Jack, an undergraduate from Georgetown, and John, a local man helping with the survey, shake soil from their sieve frame prior to looking carefully for artifacts. These test pits are small, and are filled back in immediately.Small excavations are also dug short distances from the Mwanamaimpa mound. The purpose of these small digs is to analyze the soil composition, and to remove samples for chemical analysis. This work is being undertaken by Federica Sulas (second from right), an archaeological researcher at the University of Cambridge in England with expertise in the historical ecology of landscapes. The same screening methods that are used at the main excavation are employed in the small pits that Federica’s team digs, but she is primarily looking at soils and what they can reveal about the ecology of the landscape away from the mounds. Small blocks of soil are removed from the pits for chemical analysis in England. Brian is an acting local headman who is helping Federica Sulas’s team dig the soil analysis pits. Here Brian is answering questions that Federica is asking him about local knowledge of places and land use – knowledge that Brian may have from first-hand experience, as well as from oral histories. Brian’s son stops by one of Federica’s small excavations to see what the team is up to. He has been down at the water and leans on a tall paddle of the type that’s used in the dugout canoes.On a trip to a local wood carver Kate de Luna takes notes on the dyes that this craftsman uses to color his pieces. Seven or eight of us are crammed into the tiny hut, listening to explanations of the sources of dyes for various colors, as well as the meanings of the colors in his different works. Adrian, next to Kate, interprets and helps with explanations. There were a number of these types of field trips to understand the current local culture and how it might help build an understanding of the longer-term pattern of life in the area. Back in Basanga, Kate is reviewing a book in process for a colleague. Within the Bantu Mobility Project Kate’s research on linguistics and the development of Bantu languages is combined with the archaeological artifacts to understand cultural change over time. (A simple example of the research in her field: What are the words for hunting, gathering, various landscapes, etc.? When might have they originated, and how have they evolved? The answers can help the team understand the societies they are investigating.)One afternoon with some free time in Basanga I walked on a dirt track along a long fenced field, and then walked quite a distance further into the plains surrounding our compounds. On my return I was greeted by two young people, one of whom had been asked to watch for my return. I was grateful for their watchfulness! This is a portrait of Exudeh.Jeff Fleisher at work around sundown back at the Basanga compound. We often ate a long time after the sun had gone down! This is a fuzzy photo, but it nicely captures the atmosphere at the cribbage competition that was held near the end of our stay. It was elaborately planned, with a match bracket created by Jeff’s son Max and his friend Matthew. Matt Pawlowicz and Eréndira Quintana Morales, a zooarchaeologist specializing in fish, faced off in the championship game. Matthew and Joseph look on.
