Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Tracing Diversification of Ceremonial Practices

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

The contemporary social landscape of East Africa is closely linked to pastoral immigration and the reshaping of identities over the last several millennia. Doctoral dissertation researcher Lorraine Hu will study early processes of social differentiation among herding groups by examining localized variability in burial customs. Previous scholarship on the spread of nomadic societies to this region has emphasized economy and subsistence, focusing on the aspects of daily life that make pastoralism distinct from sedentary or hunter-gatherer lifeways. Other cultural practices, though more difficult to trace in deep time, are equally important to understanding how groups create and negotiate fluid social landscapes. Archaeology is well-equipped to provide insight into questions of social variability by tracing changes in local customs over the long term. Understanding how communities choose to define their own identities through maintaining or changing traditions has relevance for many herding groups today, where processes of globalization complicate boundaries of both identity and subsistence. The project will build partnerships through providing training opportunities for Kenyan students and promote cultural heritage education in East Africa and the USA. Dr. Fiona Marshall and Lorraine Hu of Washington University in St. Louis will examine the development of funerary practices of early pastoralist groups in East Africa. The research will be conducted in southern Kenya where a tradition of cremation, unique to the area, developed between 3000-1000 years ago when herders first migrated into the highlands. These early pastoralists are known to have developed distinct lithic and ceramic traditions, but social variability across communities is yet unknown. Research on funerary customs aims to elucidate localized differences. By combining excavation, sedimentological sampling and study of skeletal material from previously excavated cremation sites, the researchers will reconstruct cremation burial practices from different sites. Integrated sediment and skeletal analyses allow detailed study of pyrotechnic processes, and in conjunction provide a new approach to mortuary research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.