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Enkapune Ya Muto
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Enkapune Ya Muto
Enkapune Ya Muto, also known as Twilight Cave, is a site spanning the late Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age on the Mau Escarpment of Kenya. This time span has allowed for further study of the transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age. In particular, the changes in lithic and pottery industries can be tracked over these time periods as well as transitions from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a herding lifestyle. Beads made of perforated ostrich egg shells found at the site have been dated to 40,000 years ago. The beads found at the site represent the early human use of personal ornaments. Inferences pertaining to climate and environment changes during the pre-Holocene and Holocene period have been made based from faunal remains based in this site.
Enkapune Ya Muto is located on the Mau Escarpment above the Naivasha basin in the Central Rift Valley. Underneath the shelter is a steep 2400-meter drop into a gully located on the west side of the Rift Valley. This area has large deposits of volcanic geological features. In particular, obsidian is very common.
Two major excavations have been done at Enkapune Ya Muto. In total, 18 1-m squares in the northern section over the rock shelter were excavated. The first excavation, by Stanley Ambrose, occurred in 1982. This excavation revealed Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age artifacts. The excavation was made up of a 2 x 2 m test pit and a 1 x 4 m step trench.
A later 10 m2 excavation, also by Stanley Ambrose occurred in 1987 to gain more Late Pleistocene data and find dates for the Middle Stone Age to Late Stone Age transition. The depth of the excavation was 5.54 m.
Stanley H. Ambrose's Chronology of the Later Stone Age and Food Production in East Africa splits Enkapune Ya Muto into 18 main strata. Radiocarbon dating has been used to estimate the ages of these layers based on artifacts and fauna in Enkapune Ya Muto. Some dates are less reliable than others due to small sample sizes or contamination from long periods of storage.
*: This is an upper bound guess. Other labs have produced dates of 2330-2560 BP.
**: Has also been dated to 5860 BP, but 6350 BP is viewed as more reliable as the sample size was larger.
***: Multiple earlier start dates have been found, but due to small sample size, they are viewed as unreliable.
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Enkapune Ya Muto
Enkapune Ya Muto, also known as Twilight Cave, is a site spanning the late Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age on the Mau Escarpment of Kenya. This time span has allowed for further study of the transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age. In particular, the changes in lithic and pottery industries can be tracked over these time periods as well as transitions from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a herding lifestyle. Beads made of perforated ostrich egg shells found at the site have been dated to 40,000 years ago. The beads found at the site represent the early human use of personal ornaments. Inferences pertaining to climate and environment changes during the pre-Holocene and Holocene period have been made based from faunal remains based in this site.
Enkapune Ya Muto is located on the Mau Escarpment above the Naivasha basin in the Central Rift Valley. Underneath the shelter is a steep 2400-meter drop into a gully located on the west side of the Rift Valley. This area has large deposits of volcanic geological features. In particular, obsidian is very common.
Two major excavations have been done at Enkapune Ya Muto. In total, 18 1-m squares in the northern section over the rock shelter were excavated. The first excavation, by Stanley Ambrose, occurred in 1982. This excavation revealed Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age artifacts. The excavation was made up of a 2 x 2 m test pit and a 1 x 4 m step trench.
A later 10 m2 excavation, also by Stanley Ambrose occurred in 1987 to gain more Late Pleistocene data and find dates for the Middle Stone Age to Late Stone Age transition. The depth of the excavation was 5.54 m.
Stanley H. Ambrose's Chronology of the Later Stone Age and Food Production in East Africa splits Enkapune Ya Muto into 18 main strata. Radiocarbon dating has been used to estimate the ages of these layers based on artifacts and fauna in Enkapune Ya Muto. Some dates are less reliable than others due to small sample sizes or contamination from long periods of storage.
*: This is an upper bound guess. Other labs have produced dates of 2330-2560 BP.
**: Has also been dated to 5860 BP, but 6350 BP is viewed as more reliable as the sample size was larger.
***: Multiple earlier start dates have been found, but due to small sample size, they are viewed as unreliable.