Hunting in yellow waters: an ethnoarchaeological perspective on selective fishing on Lake Turkana

As riverine and lacustrine environments expanded across north tropical Africa during early Holocene times, certain characteristic fishing or “aquatic hunting” strategies became widespread. This paper investigates one such strategy and an associated technology: selective fishing and barbed bone “harpoon” points in the Turkana Basin, northwest Kenya. These tools have a geographically widespread distribution across Africa, primarily north of the equator, and can shed light on hunter-gatherer technology and resource acquisition in the face of environmental and social change. Interviews with contemporary Turkana fishers highlight near-shore fishing practices analogous to those of early Holocene hunter-gatherers. For example, Turkana fishers exploiting deltaic “yellow waters” have traditionally employed selective harpoon-like tools to acquire large aquatic fauna like Lates niloticus (Nile perch) and Synodontis sp. (catfish), while using non-selective traps, hooks and nets to catch smaller and deeper-water species. These practices have changed over several decades in response to local socioeconomic and environmental shifts. Today these selective strategies show a marked seasonality and regional variability that the archaeological record of this region has thus far been ill-equipped to investigate. Through carefully constructed analogy, this preliminary work contributes to a better understanding of human technological and behavioral responses to shifting lakeshore environments today and during early Holocene times.