It has produced a sequence of past human activity stretching over more than two hundred and fifty thousand years, with evidence of continuous habitation since the Late Early Stone Age until modern times.
Excavations in 1953, 1956, 1959, and 1963 allowed Clark to make conclusions about the multiple different cultures inhabiting the area over thousands of years of time.
Clark's work incorporated both questions of the cultures who lived at the Kalambo Falls site as well as what their environment was like during times of occupation.
Clark concludes that the ground-water levels must have been high in order for a swamp and fringing, or riparian forest, to grow along the water's edge during a period of reduced rainfall.
Evidence of an increase in rainfall and a temperature drop of 4.1 °C with a fringing forest that was well developed with the return of swamp plants is indicated in the pollen collected.
Archaeologists hypothesize that the technological progression over time can be examined in the morphological characteristics of tools that are associated with different eras of habitation.
These Late Acheulean stone tools, along with hearths and well-preserved organic objects were found at Kalambo Falls and documented by JD Clark.
These organic artifacts collected included a wooden club and digging sticks as well as the dietary evidence for fruit consumption.
It is at this time in the archaeological record that the large, Acheulean handaxe disappears and is replaced by the core axe and chopping tools characteristic of Sangoan technologies.
Evidence of Sangoan habitation has been collected from less open Rock Shelters and Cave areas, possibly due to the persisting, wetter climate.
Evidence of fire technologies, such as hearths, charred logs, reddened clay, and stone heat spalls were also collected and found in association with charcoal remains.
[11] It is characterized by two-sided, or bifacial, stone tools like core axes and double-ended points that were possibly for hafting as spearheads.
Clark indicate that the frequency of these tools is possibly due to factors that exemplified the amount of large pieces of breakable, or knappable, raw materials.
[12] These Bantu-speaking people made ceramic vessels that have characteristics of East African pottery, which suggests a population movement from the Rift Valley.
In 1971, Robert C. Soper studied different assemblages of Iron Age pottery in eastern and southern Africa and consolidated them into two major groups, known as Urewe and Kwale wares.
David W. Phillipson used these conclusions to form a north to south chronology of artifacts and comprised many of the groups studied by Soper into one, Mwitu tradition.
Luangwa Pottery is characteristic of necked pots and shallow bowls, with the most common comb-stamped decoration pressed in a horizontal pattern of delineated lines.
These studies underscore the difficulty in establishing a chronology for human habitation at the falls, which has led some archaeologists to disregard its significance in the African archaeological record.
OSL works by sending signals through a crystalline material and collects data on how long ago the stone was exposed to light or heat.