Namortung’a I

Namortung’a I (also referred to as Namortung’a South) lies between the Kerio and Kangetet rivers just south of Lake Turkana, and near the town of Lokori in northern Kenya. The site comprises over 160 graves marked by stone circles (megaliths) and hundreds of rock engravings that adorn both the cemetery complex and the surrounding hillside. The site has been dated to as early as the first millennium BCE by radiocarbon dating of bone recovered from a burial pit. Today, the area is occupied by local Turkana pastoralists who brand their livestock with similar markings to the engraved stone, although local Turkana herdsmen disclaim authorship of those engravings. The stone circles consist of outer rings of irregular standing slabs (pillars) arranged edge to edge to form a circle. Pits of excavated burials are between one and four meters wide and about two meters deep, and are covered by horizontal slabs and small stones. Lithics and pottery have been recovered along with faunal remains suggestive of practices reliant on animal husbandry.

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Did you know?

In local Turkana folklore, a dance tells the tale of an elderly woman whose clothes were so strange that people laughed at her, then were punished by being turned to stone. The translation of Namortung’a is ‘People of Stone’ and it is now customary for passers-by to place pebbles on top of the stone pillars and cairns as a mark of respect.

Sources
1. Robert Soper & Mark Lynch (1977) The Stone-Circle Graves at Ng’amoritung’a, Southern Turkana District, Kenya, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 12:1, 193-208 [Link].
2. Lynch, B., & Robbins, L. (1979). Cushitic and Nilotic Prehistory: New Archaeological Evidence from North-West Kenya. The Journal of African History, 20 (3), 319-328 [Link]
3. Russell, T. (2013). Through the skin: Exploring pastoralist marks and their meanings to understand parts of East African rock art. Journal of Social Archaeology, 13 (1), 3–30 [Link].