Human Impact in the Interlacustrine Region: Long-Term Pollen Records from the Rukiga Highlands

The interlacustrine region of Africa has a rich heritage of human remains and artefacts, and has long attracted archaeological debate. The present authors maintain that palaeoecological data can make a significant contribution to this debate and to understanding the pattern of agricultural and industrial dispersal and innovation in the region. Palaeoecological research in the Rukiga or Kigezi highlands of southwest Uganda has yielded records of local and regional environmental change that span at least the past 40,000 years. This paper details the palaeoecological evidence for vegetation change over the last 7,000 years, or the period when human activity is assumed to have had a major and tangible impact on the environment. According to the evidence, which is mainly in the form of plant fossils, the most severe periods of vegetation change occurred during the last 2,200 years. The evidence also indicates that higher altitude locations in the Rukiga highlands were the first to lose their forest cover, with lower altitude sites being cleared at the beginning of the present millennium. This time-transgressive nature of forest clearance is likely to have been human-induced and may reflect cultural change and industrial innovation in the area. Bibliogr., note., sum.