Remaking the Late Holocene Environment of Western Uganda: Archaeological Perspectives on Kansyore and Later Settlers

Abstract

Archaeological and environmental research by an international and interdisciplinary team opens new perspectives into the settlement his tories of Kansyore, Early Iron Age, and Bigo period peoples in the once forested regions of the Ndali Cra ter Lakes Region (NCLR) of western Uganda. The research examines the role of Kansyore agropasto ralists and their Early Iron Age and Bantu-speaking contemporaries in remaking a once forested environ ment into a forest-savannah mosaic from circa 500 Archaeological and environmental research by an international and interdisciplinary team opens new perspectives into the settlement his tories of Kansyore, Early Iron Age, and Bigo period peoples in the once forested regions of the Ndali Cra ter Lakes Region (NCLR) of western Uganda. The research examines the role of Kansyore agropasto ralists and their Early Iron Age and Bantu-speaking contemporaries in remaking a once forested environ ment into a forest-savannah mosaic from circa 500 symbolic values are revealed, including Bigo period settlements that arose in what was an environmental refugium beginning in the early fourteenth century AD. This research also shows that the Kansyore of the forested region east of the Rwenzori Mountains had greater affinities to late Holocene archaeologi cal evidence from western Equatoria, in the southern South Sudan, and Kansyore Island, Uganda, than it does to the Kansyore in eastern Kenya.