Ancient forager behavior in the open woodland belt of southern-central Africa is poorly understood relative to surrounding regions. Archaeological work in the 1960s-1970s resulted in recovery of numerous forager skeletal remains from the Early and Middle Holocene, from a range of contexts that suggested substantial diversity in mortuary practice. However, most analyses were focused on efforts to assign biological population affinity to the remains, rather than to understand ancient lifeways of the people they represent. Excavations undertaken since 2016 at five rockshelter sites in northern Malawi have extended the chronology of the record into the Pleistocene, and resulted in recovery of eight ancient genomes and remains from at least 17 new individuals. Detailed field recovery methods, spatial analysis, and taphonomic assessment has revealed that the former emphasis on more complete inhumations has overlooked a culturally rich set of ancient mortuary practices that involved the disarticulation of human elements and their redeposition at specific “deathplaces”. These places also contain a diverse array of mortuary contexts, including flexed inhumations, use of rock cairns, and the oldest cremation in Africa – found in situ within the pyre itself. These data show that complex mortuary behavior was present in tropical foraging groups, and reveal the importance of social and memorial landscapes as a part of the structure of ancient lifeways in the region.
