Archaeologists refer to the period of iron-based cultural adaptation and elaboration as the Iron Age. They have divided it into the Early and Late Iron Age periods. The Early Iron Age was the time when iron tools replaced stone tools and ironworking technology became widespread. There is still some debate as to whether ironworking technology in sub-Saharan Africa was indigenously invented or not. In some areas, such as the Great Lakes region, people were producing iron implements by the middle of the first millennium BC. By the beginning of the second millennium ad, more cultural and economic changes began to take shape in much of sub-Saharan Africa, a period archaeologists refer to as the Late Iron Age. These changes included the development of states in areas where such institutions had been unknown, and the intensification of long-distance trade. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, state formation and long-distance trade seem to have occurred more or less at the same time, with trade being ‘seen as both a stimulus and a mechanism for state formation’. These activities resulted in a great deal of population displacement and movement, as was undertaken by the Chewa.

The southern Lake Malawi area attracted more attention from archaeologists than all other areas in the country after archaeologists confirmed that the earliest Iron Age communities arrived there early in the third century. During the last five decades of the twentieth century, several archaeologists carried out various research projects in the area (see Map 6.1) where they discovered and described five different Iron Age pottery types. This enabled archaeologists to establish a pottery sequence which C-14 dates have confirmed. The Iron Age archaeology of the southern Lake Malawi area became the best known in the country.

The environment of the southern Lake Malawi area

Lake Malawi and the Shire River, its only outlet, dominate the environment of the southern Lake Malawi area. The lake is one of Malawi's most outstanding topographic features. It lies within the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, which stretches from the Zambezi River in Mozambique to the Red Sea. The Lake Malawi part of the Rift Valley runs almost due north for a distance of about 644 kilometres and it averages 80 kilometres in width. The lake itself measures some 29 604 square kilometres.