Eastern Equatorial Forest Variant of Acheulean and Subsequent Stone Age Industries: A Report of Stone Age Industries Discovered in Kabanga, Northwestern Tanzania

Following the desire by Kabanga Nickel Company Ltd. to develop nickel mining in Ngara District, north-western Tanzania, the Kabanga Nickel Project (KNP) commissioned assessment and retrieval of cultural heritage, i.e. (property and sites having archaeological, paleontological, historical, cultural, artistic or religious value) followed by mitigation measures as required by both the Government of Tanzania and the International Finance Corporation.Consequently archaeological fieldwork was undertaken in four phases in October 2007, January 2008, November 2009 and June 2010.The fieldwork discovered archaeological assemblages spanning the Acheulean Later Stone Age (LSA) continuum on technological and typological grounds in a total of 59 sites.This discovery is important for exposing the cultural heritage of this part of north-western Tanzania and by extension that of the neighbouring Rwanda and Burundi hitherto an archaeological terra incognita and for widening the distribution of the Acheulean in Tanzania.Archaeological knowledge of the neighbouring countries is restricted to the later prehistory and proto history fieldwork included vehicle and pedestrian survey and subsurface testing of locations that were determined to posses moderate to high potential of archaeological remains.In addition to survey, archaeological potential was surmised by using topographic maps of the area.Ultimately survey identified and recorded a total of 59 archaeological sites from which more than 10,320 (13,000) artefacts were retrieved.The distribution of archaeological sites across the study area was variable in content and density.The baseline work established that four technologically and chronologically differentiated assemblages are represented in the Project area.These are the Acheulean, Middle Stone Age (MSA), Late Stone Age (LSA) and Iron Age.In addition, some of the artefacts found indicate the possibility of a fifth, technologically earlier industrial complex, either pre-Acheulean or Oldowan.However, a firm establishment of an Oldowan industry, hitherto only known in Tanzania from Olduvai Gorge and Peninj, would require more fieldwork, outside the scope of the study.The sites recorded suggest an unbroken occupation of the area for at least 300,000 years on the basis of relative dates of the assemblages.However this report discusses only the Acheulean/Sangoan component and the assemblages that are roughly subsumed under the rubric of MSA though a summary of the later industries is provided.Some of their tool composition would have been part of the tool kit required for the exploitation of the rainforest savannah ecotone as the area is imagined to have been in the later part of the Pleistocene.