Urewe ironworking in the Great Lakes region
Siderurgia de Urewe en los Grandes Lagos
- Date
- c. 700-500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Great Lakes region, Rwanda
- Credited to
- Peoples of the Urewe pottery tradition
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Settlements of the Urewe tradition (Rwanda, Burundi, western Kenya, Uganda) show iron-smelting furnaces from the 8th-5th centuries BC, among the oldest dates in East Africa. This metallurgy is linked to the spread of Bantu speakers to the south and east.
The early dates from Rwanda and Burundi (van Grunderbeek, Roche) overlap with those from Buhaya (Tanzania) and are periodically revised; the location is approximate because Urewe is a tradition, not a single site.
What it led to
- iron tools to clear forest and grow sorghum and millet
- the basis of the Great Lakes kingdoms
- spread of ironworking across eastern and southern Africa