A monumental cemetery built by eastern Africa's first herders near Lake Turkana, Kenya.

ABSTRACT: Monumental architecture is a prime indicator of social complexity, because it requires many people to build a conspicuous structure commemorating shared beliefs. Examining monumentality in different environmental and economic settings can reveal diverse reasons for people to form larger social units and express unity through architectural display. In multiple areas of Africa, monumentality developed as mobile herders created large cemeteries and practiced other forms of commemoration. The motives for such behavior in sparsely populated, unpredictable landscapes may differ from well-studied cases of monumentality in predictable environments with sedentary populations. Here we report excavations and ground-penetrating radar surveys at the earliest and most massive monumental site in eastern

SUBMITTER: Hildebrand EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6130363 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature