The geochronological landscape of Mozambique: absolute dates from archaeological and palaeoenvironmental contexts

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of absolute dating data from Mozambique, drawing on a compiled database of 442 dates from 69 sites. The dataset spans archaeological and palaeoenvironmental contexts and encompasses dates ranging from the present day to close to a half a million years ago, covering the whole of the Holocene and part of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene. The most widely used dating method is radiocarbon (AMS and original), followed by luminescence techniques (OSL variants and pIRIR), electron spin resonance (ESR), uranium-series and cosmogenic nuclide dating. More than 250 dates belong to archaeological contexts distributed across four cultural phases — the Ceramic Phase, the Later Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age and the Early Stone Age — while the remaining entries come from palaeoenvironmental contexts. Regionally, the southern provinces of Inhambane, Gaza and Maputo are the most densely sampled, followed by the central region (Zambezia, Tete, Sofala and Manica) and lastly the northern region (Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Nampula). These distributions are discussed in the light of research history and the chronological resolution offered by each method. Significant gaps are identified in the geochronological coverage of Mozambique that call for targeted future investigation.