Excavations at Narosura, a Stone Bowl Site in the Southern Kenya Highlands

Summary The article describes an excavation carried out at Narosura in Narok District, Kenya. The site is located about 2000 metres above sea level in semi-arid country. The people living around Narosura today are Masai, predominantly pastoral, but also practising some irrigation agriculture. The precise extent of the prehistoric habitation area cannot be given, but it is estimated to be about 8400 square metres. Twenty-one square metres were excavated down to 100 cm from the surface. A large amount of stone artefacts, pottery and animal bones and teeth were recovered. There were also grindingstones, pestle-rubbers, bone implements, broken stone bowls and fragments of polished stone axes. The animal teeth have been analysed by Richard Gramly. They were from cattle, goats or sheep, and unidentified equid. Non-domesticated species constituted less than 5 per cent of the total. Four charcoal samples have given dates between 870±115 and 460±110 B.C. The pottery is highly characteristic. Similar ware is known from other sites in Narok district, and possibly also from sites located farther to the south and east. It is only in a very general way that the pottery from Narosura bears resemblances to other pottery from the Kenya highlands. The stone artefacts show many similarities with the broadly contemporary Elmenteitan stone industry in the Nakuru area. Alan Jacobs, who first discovered the site, outlines Masai oral traditions about the area and discusses how these, considered with the material found at Narosura, may lead us to make certain conjectures about the ethnic origins of the original occupants of the site.