The Khina Culture

The area of the Khina culture is a plateau region in the mountains, surrounded by slopes and lots of rocks located in central Africa. The group living in the region is a pastoralism/early agriculture-based society, needing to grow food and collect supplies to prepare and cultivate their crops. It has been well documented that the transition into agriculture was very hard on humans as a whole, all around the world, and this would have been no different living where the Khina people lived. While little formal and recent archaeological excavations have been done in the area, the ethnographic record with recorded accounts from around the 1920s is extensive and provides a lot of information about what could be expected in an excavation of the area

The storage, cooking, and serving vessels are most likely to be found in the kitchen or cooking areas. This may also be where the beer vats and a water container are found. The latrine, as is today, is typically tucked away in a corner for privacy. A central water container is found in the middle of the structure, and pots typically are found near where one can assume they would be used. The broken pots with leaves for trapping bugs would be found away from the living area, and as according to the map, there are small pots for birthing ritual purposes found just outside the living structure. A granary, where sacred ritual pots, those of most importance and symbolism, is found as the central focus of the room. Right in the middle with equal access from all parts of the structure, the granary would be located and within it these funerary vessels and important artifacts. The midden, or garbage pile, would be found outside but near the house. This pattern of artifact distribution based on artifact function would likely be repeated through the site, at most if not all of the habitation structures and living

In many religions and cultures, these practices are often highly visible and differentiate in funerary and mortuary rituals. The use of pots in these practices by the Khina culture show values of the group, as well as how not only important the dead are to the living, but the connectedness between those who have passed on and those that are still living. If Christianity had recently come to the region and those of the Khina culture started interacting with Christians, the difference would likely be seen first in the funeral and mortuary traditions of the groups. Christianity often displays less of the dead, and the interaction between the dead and the living ceases sooner than is apparent in the Khina culture. Other aspects that might change would be the designs on the pots, decorations would be different and convey different messages than the designs of the Khina culture do. This change in decorative style may also be seen if border interactions increased and various goods were being smuggled in. The decoration styles and the shapes of the pottery would likely be strongly impacted by this influx of new materials, even such to the point of some vessel types either completely disappearing, or new types appearing out of no