Human impact in the Interlacustrine region: long-term pollen records from the Rukiga Highlands

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Abstract
The interlacustrine region of Africa has a rich heritage of human remains and artefacts, and has long attracted archaeological debate. The authors maintain that, when rigorously applied, 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. Situated on the western margins of the interlacustrine region, the Rukiga highlands have themselves witnessed few specifically archaeological studies, although the area has been, and continues to be, an important focus for palaeoecological research. The latter 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 7000 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 2200 years, although at no time in the past has the vegetation remained stable. 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.