Thomas John John Biginagwa

The human past of the wildlife-rich western Serengeti region in northern Tanzania remains largely unexplored despite its potential and the mine of knowledge it portends. Bower and colleagues conducted pioneering archaeological excavations under rescue conditions during the construction of the Seronera Game Lodge in the world-famous Serengeti National Park in the early 1970s, and subsequently test-excavated two other locations in the 1980s. Although archaeological disturbances construction works occasioned and inadequate techniques of material analysis hindered Bower and colleagues’ research, they identified elements of early-herding communities’ expansion into this region. This proposal seeks to revitalize and expand systematic archaeological research in western Serengeti using the multidisciplinary approach and innovative techniques in material analysis currently employed in archaeology to optimize the exploration of human experience in this distinct wildlife-rich region. Specifically, the study will explore human habitation history, adoption of pastoralism, and exchange networks during the late Holocene. The findings will provide a much-needed reappraisal of human history in such wildlife-concentration regions and challenge, in the process, ideas about the much-touted “pristine wilderness” associated with the Serengeti, aptly named “endless plains” in Maasai, to reveal how, hitherto unheralded, various human activities have shaped and sustained these landscapes and habitats.