A Southern African Perspective on the Contribution of Charcoal Analyses to Archaeology

Abstract

Southern Africa has a long and rich archaeological record, ranging from the Oldowan lithics in the Sterkfontein valley and Wonderwerk Cave (about 2 Ma) to Iron Age smelting (less than one thousand years ago) in Zimbabwe. A brief overview of charcoal analyses indicates applications in such areas as dating, vegetation and climate reconstructions, fuel use, medicinal use, and the interpretation of human behavior. Some of the research done in the 20th century mainly focused on charcoal for the purpose of dating, but this has diversified in the 21st century to include other applications. The focus is on South African sites, but research from Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe is included. Southern Africa has a very diverse woody component with more than fifteen hundred species from a flora of more than twenty-five thousand species so the establishment of regional modern reference collections of charcoalified woods has been instrumental in improving identifications of the archaeological taxa. Early Middle Stone Age charcoal records show that a diversity of woody species was burned. By Middle Stone Age times, records show the selection of woods for fuel, tinder, and medicinal use as well as cooking of starchy rhizomes. Late Stone Age and Iron Age records, in addition, show the use of woods for smelting and intense fires.

The effect of charcoal production on carbon cycling in African biomes

“…In Experiment 1, we run a 120-year simulation from 1901 to 2020. We only implemented production starting from 1961 because that is the earliest year with available charcoal production data in SSA, although there was charcoal production before this period as this is one of the most ancient practices in the region (Chikumbirike et al, 2019). We believe that this implementation decision does not affect our results much as it only means there is higher initial biomass than when accounting for charcoal production, but since there is only 7% of biomass harvesting for charcoal, this is relatively low (Chidumayo & Gumbo, 2013).…”