The dik-diks of Guli Waabayo: Late Pleistocene net-hunting and forager sociality in eastern Africa

Net-hunting is closely linked to organized labor and hunter-gatherer cooperation in many world regions. At the Rifle Range Site (RRS) in southern Somalia, scholars have argued that Later Stone Age (LSA) foragers developed specialized dwarf antelope hunting strategies-possibly using communal net-drives-to facilitate developing concepts of territoriality around resource-rich inselberg environments during a wet period in the early and middle Holocene. Unfortunately, a lack of radiocarbon dates and faunal data limited detailed zooarchaeological perspectives on changing hunting patterns at the site. The large and well-dated dwarf antelope bone assemblage (1263 specimens) from nearby Guli Waabayo (GW) rock shelter, on the other hand, provides an opportunity to explore proposed relationships between net-hunting and LSA social and economic reorganization in southern Somalia similar to 26-6 thousand years ago (ka). Consistently high dik-dik frequencies (55.2-71.9%) and mortality profiles comprised of individuals from all age groups throughout the sequence do not support previous arguments associating specialized dwarf antelope hunting with territoriality and Holocene climatic amelioration at RRS. Instead, they suggest that LSA foraging groups regularly hunted dik-dik (genus Madoqua) using nets over a similar to 20,000-year period beginning as far back as the arid Marine Isotope Stage 2, 29-14.5 ka. Findings from this study complement recent arguments for greater economic variability in Late Pleistocene eastern Africa and push discussions of forager social change further back in time than previously considered.

Automated summary

A study on a site in southern Somalia suggests that Late Stone Age foragers used communal nets for hunting, rather than associating specialized hunting with territoriality and Holocene climatic changes. The findings also support the idea of economic variability in Late Pleistocene eastern Africa and push the discussions of social change among foragers to an earlier period.