Archaeology of Malawi

People first began to be interested in Malawi's prehistoric past in the 1920s. Excavations of sites in nearby countries, Tanzania and Zambia, made archaeologists believe that they may find the same type of material culture in Malawi. In the 1920s, a series of lacustrine deposits was found at the northwest end of Lake Malawi. These beds contained fragmentary fossils and were mapped by Dr. F. Dixey. These findings sparked an interest to excavate more locations in Malawi.

Uraha is an Early Stone Age site in Uraha Hill, northern Malawi. It is part of the Chiwondo Beds site which is where the fossil remains were found on the lake beds. It is known for the discovery of a jawbone of an ancient human dating to 2.4 million years ago. This specimen is one of the oldest occurrences of the genus Homo and is assumed to be of the species Homo rudolfensis. The recovery of this bone helped create a connection between sites of East and South Africa. There were no stone tools found but, animal fossils revealed a pattern of habitat change between about 4 and 1.5 million years ago when the land became more of a grassland.

Mwanganda's Village is one of the few Middle Stone Age archaeological sites in Malawi and it is found in Karonga. This site was first known for the findings of an elephant butchery site. At this site, archaeologists have found associated animal bones and stone artifacts. In Area 1 of the village, there was evidence of a single elephant carcass. The elephant bones were broken and dispersed into three main concentrations. These bones have been dated back to the late Middle or early Upper times. This evidence resulted in J. Desmond Clark's hypothesis about the site being a butchery site. Area 2 of the village contained evidence for other hunting activities, presumably on different occasions. Current research indicates that this site is not an elephant butchery site but evidence for successive colonization of riparian corridors by Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherers focused on exploiting localized resources during periods of humidity while other lakes dried up across Africa.

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