The Hybrid Landscape: Materiality, Connectivity and Mobility of the last 4000 years of Hunter-Gatherers in the Southwest Maputo Province, Mozambique
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Muianga D
Studies in Global Archaeology - (-) 32-296 [2025-10-22; online 2025-10-22]
Mozambican Stone Age and the transition into farming communities remain poorly explored compared to the rest of the southern region, and its archaeological heritage is still primarily explained in terms of better-known sequences of other southern African countries. Southern Mozambique has very few sites with archaeological evidence related to hunter-gatherers that are well described. The lithic assemblages from Daimane I and II rock shelter in Changalane Administrative Post (Namaacha District, Maputo Province), apart from the rock art, become one of the few sources of explanation of the use of the rock shelters in the area. Lithic analysis, phytoliths, ancient soil DNA, radiocarbon and OSL dating show that formal and informal tools were produced or used in the area, as part of the hunting and gathering way of life. Rock paintings that are aspects of the symbolic behaviour of early hominids and later by foragers are also present in DAIM I and II, which marked their passage and represent a unique archaeological sequence of chronological and symbolic events during the Holocene. To build an understanding of the Stone Age sequence of the area, this dissertation considers the sequence of the occupation of the sites based on the typological and chronological features recognised on the lithic and other artefacts and also other types of data. Diagnostic cultural material at DAIM I and DAIM II strongly suggests a continuity of the hunter-gatherer presence through the first millennium AD and maintenance of the Later Stone Age way of life in the Lebombo Mountain range in the Changalane Administrative Post and surrounding areas.