Unsettled Settlements: Continuity and change in the Marakwet habitation of the northern Elgeyo Escarpment, northwest Kenya, from c. 1850 to the present-day
type: CreativeWork
description: The general aim of this thesis is to formulate a methodological and interpretive exemplar for the study of sedentary settlement across sub-Saharan Africa. Rural settlement dynamics across the continent—particularly the connections between long-term changes in settlement patterns/composition and the shorter-term lived experiences of the people whose lives embody those changes—remain notably understudied within both archaeology and associated disciplines. This thesis comprises an exploration of how archaeology might turn again to the past lives of Africa’s non-urban sedentary populations, in this case from the localised perspective of Marakwet. In doing so, I adopt and advocate for a cross-disciplinary methodology attuned to analysis at multiple scales to investigate the tangled relations that have conditioned the shape and experience of Marakwet settlement throughout the past several centuries and into the present. It is through this methodological and interpretive framework that I seek to reclaim a sense of the deep interrelationship between continuity and change that has characterised the built environment of these predominantly agrarian settlements throughout their history, and which is firmly rooted in the quotidian reality of their inhabitants’ lifeways. To do so, this thesis investigates the settlement history of the Marakwet community of Kacheseker, situated on Kenya’s northern Elgeyo Escarpment. Varied analyses are employed to chart the spatial development of the settlement since its foundation approximately 200 years ago, during which it has changed in terms of both the form and location of its principal habitation zone. To understand the detail of these changes, and why they have occurred in the way they have, I have utilised multiple methods drawn from across archaeology and its cognate disciplines, in which the analytic lens travels from the wider landscape, down to the level of individual housing compounds, and back again. These methods encompass archaeo…
abstract: The general aim of this thesis is to formulate a methodological and interpretive exemplar for the study of sedentary settlement across sub-Saharan Africa. Rural settlement dynamics across the continent—particularly the connections between long-term changes in settlement patterns/composition and the shorter-term lived experiences of the people whose lives embody those changes—remain notably understudied within both archaeology and associated disciplines. This thesis comprises an exploration of how archaeology might turn again to the past lives of Africa’s non-urban sedentary populations, in this case from the localised perspective of Marakwet. In doing so, I adopt and advocate for a cross-disciplinary methodology attuned to analysis at multiple scales to investigate the tangled relations that have conditioned the shape and experience of Marakwet settlement throughout the past several centuries and into the present. It is through this methodological and interpretive framework that I seek to reclaim a sense of the deep interrelationship between continuity and change that has characterised the built environment of these predominantly agrarian settlements throughout their history, and which is firmly rooted in the quotidian reality of their inhabitants’ lifeways. To do so, this thesis investigates the settlement history of the Marakwet community of Kacheseker, situated on Kenya’s northern Elgeyo Escarpment. Varied analyses are employed to chart the spatial development of the settlement since its foundation approximately 200 years ago, during which it has changed in terms of both the form and location of its principal habitation zone. To understand the detail of these changes, and why they have occurred in the way they have, I have utilised multiple methods drawn from across archaeology and its cognate disciplines, in which the analytic lens travels from the wider landscape, down to the level of individual housing compounds, and back again. These methods encompass archaeo…
author: Kay, David K
language: eng
keywords: Archaeology, Landscape, Settlement, Marakwet, Kenya, East Africa, Household, Geoarchaeology, Oral History
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date published: 2021-11-30
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:07Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.80367