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A collection of shallow pits carved into a rock ledge, believed to be mancala game boards, have been identified in central Kenya.
Mancala is a group of two-player strategy games that involve moving tokens across rows of shallow holes in the ground or on a board. The games have a long history, with examples found in ancient Egypt and other regions dating back thousands of years, and many varieties are still played around the world today. The possible mancala boards in question here are located in Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, an area with a rich archaeological heritage. They consist of at least 20 ‘boards’, each made up of 24 holes in rows of two or more. Some are heavily eroded, while others overlie older examples, suggesting that they were created by herders returning to the site repeatedly over time. Dating of the pits has not yet been carried out, but mobile pastoralists first reached this region c.4,000 years ago, so they could have been created as early as this, or they could be just a few centuries old; further research is required.
These features were brought to the attention of Dr Veronica Waweru, at Yale University, and her colleagues Dr Francis Kirera and Dr Nasser Malit, by a Lewa manager and guide Calum MacFarlane. The discovery is just one of the many finds being produced by a wider project, supported by Yale University, Nairobi National Museum, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Leakey Foundation, exploring past human activity in the region by engaging local communities in archaeological research. Among the other discoveries of note are a group of 19 burial mounds located near the possible mancala boards. Dr Waweru suspects that there could be some kind of connection between these features, with nomadic herders returning to the area seasonally for specific social or ritual activities. Future research will test this hypothesis, but, regardless, these discoveries demonstrate how much stands to be learned by involving local people in the production of archaeological knowledge.
Text: Amy Brunskill / Image: courtesy of Veronica Waweru
