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 cave site has rich archaeological deposits dating to the Middle Stone Age, Later Stone Age, and Iron Age. Excavated deposits preserve an unusually long record of human activities, from around 78,000 years ago until around 400 years ago, a chronology supported by radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence dating. This sequence puts Panga ya Saidi alongside other key sites such as Enkapune ya Muto, Mumba Rockshelter, and Nasera Rockshelter that are important for understanding the Late Pleistocene and the Middle to Later Stone Age transition in eastern Africa.

The archaeological potential of Panga ya Saidi was first noted by Robert Soper and later by Richard Helm. Beginning in 2010, the cave site has been excavated by the Sealinks Project, headed by Nicole Boivin. 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 and the proliferation of symbolic objects such as bone tools, engraved ochre, and beads in Late Pleistocene eastern Africa. Zooarchaeology and stable isotope analysis have been used to reconstruct Late Pleistocene and Holocene paleoecology and subsistence from animal bone remains. Investigations have also focused on the role of the site in late Holocene agricultural and trading networks along the Swahili coast, with African crops such as pearl millet, nonnative animals such as black rat, marine shell beads, glass beads, and Tana ware pottery documented in the Iron Age deposits. Ancient DNA recovered from a 400-year-old burial indicated that this individual was most closely related to ancient and present-day hunter-gatherers in eastern Africa, including the ancient individual at Mota, Ethiopia.

A deciduous second molar of a child was found in some of the deepest deposits at Panga ya Saidi, located in Layer 18, dating to about 78,000 years ago (MIS 5). Carbon and oxygen stable isotope analysis indicates reliance on C3 plants. Since this is a deciduous tooth, that dietary signal may reflect the diet of the child's mother if breastfeeding, or it may reflect foods given to the child if weaning. 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.

Evidence of modern behavior was found in 2021 when evidence of Africa's earliest intentional burial was found. A 78,000-year-old Middle Stone Age grave of a three-year-old child was discovered in Panga ya Saidi cave. Researchers said the child's head appeared to have been laid on a pillow. The body had been laid in a fetal position. However, this alleged burial is tens of thousands of years younger than burials at Skhul and Qafzeh caves, in Israel, belonging to African populations with the same African lithic cultural tradition.