Panga ya Saidi is an archaeological cave site located in Kilifi County, southeastern Kenya, about 15 km from the Indian Ocean in the Dzitsoni limestone hills.

The interdisciplinary archaeological project is now based at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, in partnership with the National Museums of Kenya.

These investigations have helped to establish the significance of Panga ya Saidi for understanding the Middle to Later Stone Age technological transition[9][10] and the proliferation of symbolic objects[11] such as bone tools, engraved ochre, and beads in Late Pleistocene eastern Africa.

[1][12] Based on a 3 meter deep excavation of the archaeological site, a sequence of 19 layers were found and divided by three lithographic boundaries into four groups.

The oldest group consisted of Layers 19 - 17 (dated to 76,000-73,000 years ago) characterized primarily by reddish-brown clay loams with bone fragments from mollusk shells and mammals, and appears to lack any structures.

Unit III with layers 13 - 5 (59,000-14,000 years ago) contains heterogenous loam with abundant evidence of human activity and ash, with the presence of hearths, burning, lithics, and floor hollows.

[1][9] Large or medium-sized tools made on coarse-grained raw material including limestone, using the Levallois technique, are found in early deposits at the site.

Between 72,000 and 67,000 years ago, archaeologists note a trend over time toward bipolar reduction techniques and smaller and sharper tools, such as prismatic blades, made on fine-grained raw material.

However, the archaeologists note that this is not a dramatic transition, since Levallois techniques continue to be used throughout much of the Panga ya Saidi sequence, even after new technologies appear.

[10] The archaeologists conclude that the defining feature of this transition at Panga ya Saidi is miniaturization, rather than specific tool types or reduction techniques.

[12] A deciduous second molar of a child was found in some of the deepest deposits at Panga ya Saidi, located in Layer 18 and dating to about 78,000 years ago (MIS 5).

The signal of C3 plants is consistent with zooarchaeological evidence showing that the main animals at Panga ya Saidi in the deepest layers were from tropical forested or woodland environments.

[18] During the Iron Age, Panga ya Saidi primarily had archaeobotanical evidence for crops such as pearl and finger millet, sorghum and baobab.

[13] A direct Accelerator Mass Spectrometry radiocarbon date on a sorghum seed indicates that this crop appeared at Panga ya Saidi by 770–950 CE.

As well, evidence from carbon and oxygen stable isotopes and zooarchaeological data show that people hunted African bovids (like those listed above), and that the environment was semi-closed forest during the Iron Age.

[16] The buried person was an adult male, interred alongside artifacts including marine shell beads, small knapped stone tools, and Tana Tradition potsherds.