studied. Sites in this category are varied and scattered and are mostly found in both the open savanna and the forested ecotones. In some instances, these sites are assumed to be manifestations of the direct ancestors of the groups of people who are living in these areas, and they have thus been linked to oral traditions. The use of oral traditions as a source of information for archaeology started becoming fashionable in the 1960s, especially after urgings from JanVansina about the necessity of undertaking interdisciplinary approaches that used archaeology, oral traditions, historical linguistics, and ethnographic data as sources in studying African history (Vansina 1965, 1967). As a result, M. Posnansky used oral traditions to corroborate his excavation findings at the Ankole capital site of Bwenyorere (Posnansky 1967). Oral traditions have also been used in locating archaeological sites (Schmidt 1983a, 1983b; Wandibba 1977) and in explaining the history and functions of sites (Scully 1969, 1979; Sutton and Robert 1968).

Coastal archaeological sites were believed to be different and separate from sites in the interior, despite the fact that in most cases coastal and interior sites were contemporaneous. This belief was due to the fact that the archaeologists who originally researched the coastal sites were mostly foreigners and tended to regard the coastal settlements as foreign, having been founded by commercial merchants from the Persian Gulf (e.g., Chittick 1984). Later research that was conducted mostly by indigenous archaeologists has shown that the coastal settlements were intrinsically local in origin and relied on the local populations and resources for their foundation and sustenance (e.g., Abungu 1989; Mutoro 1987). Foreign merchants only enhanced the stature of these settlements and enabled them to be linked to the metropolitan commercial centers.

The existence of a large number of linguistic groups within East Africa, and local archaeologists’ concerns about the establishment of a cultural sequence, prompted an attempt to correlate various archaeological entities with particular language families (Ambrose 1982, 1984a, 1984b; Phillipson 1977). Ambrose (1982, 1984b) and Robertshaw (1989) have linked the Elmenteitan and SPN archaeological entities to linguistic groups that are thought to have entered Kenya at some point in the later-Holocene period. Sutton (1966, 1986), Odner (1971), and Ambrose (1982, 1984a) have argued that the SPN represents the original incursion of the earliest food producers, the southern Cushitic speakers, into eastern Africa. The Elmenteitan has been commonly linked with southern Nilotic speakers on the basis of ethnohistory, ceramic continuities (Robertshaw 1989), and reconstructions of the timing of migrations and intergroup contacts (Ambrose 1982; Ehret 1974, 1976).

Ambrose (1982) contends that the Eburran 5 sites were created by indigenous peoples, possibly Khoisan speakers, who led a foraging lifestyle but were forced to adapt to food producing ways of life because of competition from immigrant farmers and herders. L. Shepartz (1988), however, argues that while indigenous peoples may be represented on the Neolithic record, their remains show no distinctive Khoisanoid features.

Soper (1971a, 1971b, 1982) and Phillipson (1977, 1985) contend that the early–Iron Age artifacts were the work of the Bantu speakers. Their argument is based on the fact that iron working, mud-built settlements, and some ceramics made their first appearance in the archaeological record at the same time the Bantu speakers did. They argue that this fact is enough to justify the correlation of the Bantu speakers with the early Iron Age.

Most archaeologists working in East Africa have seldom explicitly discussed their base assumptions for giving priority to one raw material, such as ceramics, over another for inferring shared cultural attributes. Nor has there been detailed discussion of the reasoning behind correlating linguistic and/or ethnic affiliations to archaeological traditions or phases. Ethnographic evidence suggests that correlation of ceramic or lithic technology with linguistic family or of either of these with demes or ethnic groups may overly simplify complex and mutable social interactions (Hodder 1982; Kiriama 1997). It may be more productive to recast the