The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns

by Andah,Bassey; Andah,Bassey

• ISBN13: 9780415084444
• ISBN10: 041508444X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-03-10
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Archaeology of Africa, an anthology of essays, provides an overview of development in Africa from c. 8,000 B.C. to the present day, and also includes review chapters as well as other in-depth studies. A large proportion of the contributors live in Africa or are natives of the continent and therefore share an intimate knowledge of the region. The Africa which emerges from this book is far different from the vast and barren "dark continent" of popular myth. Although commonly perceived as an identitiless region content to absorb the cultures of its numerous colonizers, Africa instead emerges from this book as the proud possessor of a vast and highly intricate amalgamation of peoples and cultures, an enormous diversity of economic and social strategies, as well as an amazingly heterogeneous number of environments. Archaeologists have unearthed enough of Africa's unwritten past to both confound preconceptions about this continent and further upset the so-called "truth" ofhistoric written records. This book adheres to the principle that, without an understanding of this continent's history, it is impossible to grasp its present, let alone its future.

Table of Contents

List of contributors
Foreword
Preface
Radiocarbon dates
Introduction	p. 1
Africa's climate in the Holocene	p. 32
The climatic and vegetational history of the equatorial regions of Africa during the upper Quaternary	p. 43
The tropical African cereals	p. 53
The spread of domestic animals in Africa	p. 61
Ethnographic and linguistic evidence for the prehistory of African ruminant livestock, horses and ponies	p. 71
Nilo-Saharans and the Saharo-Sudanese Neolithic	p. 104
Recent developments in African language classification and their implications for prehistory	p. 126
Linguistic evidence for the use of some tree and tuber food plants in southern Nigeria	p. 139
Examination of botanical remains from early neolithic houses at Nabta Playa, Western Desert, Egypt, with special reference to sorghum grains	p. 154
Foraging and farming in Egypt: the transition from hunting and gathering to horticulture in the Nile valley	p. 165
The emergence of a food-producing economy in the Sahara	p. 227
Identifying early farming traditions of west Africa	p. 240
The Kintampo complex: a case study of early sedentism and food production in sub-Sahelian west Africa	p. 255
Intensification in the west African Late Stone Age: a view from central Ghana	p. 261
Agriculture and settlement among the Tiv of Nigeria: some ethno-archaeological observations	p. 274
Central Africa and the archaeology of the equatorial rainforest: reflections on some major topics	p. 289
Transition from Late Stone Age to Iron Age in the Sudano-Sahelian zone: a case study from the Perichadian plain	p. 330
The antiquity of cultivation and herding in Ethiopia	p. 344
The beginnings of food production in southwestern Kenya	p. 358
The rise and fall of nomadic pastoralism in the central Namib desert	p. 372
The iron age peoples of east-central Botswana	p. 386
Iron age settlement and subsistence patterns in southern Malawi	p. 391
A question of identities: an anthropological enquiry and a historical narrative	p. 399
A perspective on archaeological research in Mozambique	p. 409
New evidence on early iron-smelting from southeastern Nigeria	p. 432
Changing perspectives on traditional iron production in west Africa	p. 449
Iron technology in the middle Sahel/Savanna: with emphasis on central Darfur	p. 459
Iron-making techniques in the Kivu region of Zaire: some of the differences between the South Maniema region and north Kivu	p. 468
Ancient iron-working in Madagascar	p. 478
The iron-using communities in Kenya	p. 484
Metaphors and representations associated with precolonial iron-smelting in eastern and southern Africa	p. 499
The magical production of iron in the Cameroon Grassfields	p. 512
Town and village in ancient Egypt: ecology, society and urbanization	p. 551
Urbanism in bronze age Egypt and northeast Africa	p. 570
The land of Punt	p. 587
State development and urbanism in northern Ethiopia	p. 609
Cities without citadels: understanding urban origins along the middle Niger	p. 622
Urbanization and state formation in Ghana during the Iron Age	p. 642
The salt industries of west Africa: a preliminary study	p. 652
Trade and politics on the eastern littoral of Africa, AD 800-1300	p. 658
Exploitation of marine resources: evidence for the origin of the Swahili communities of east Africa	p. 673
Coast-interior settlements and social relations in the Kenya coastal hinterland	p. 694
Urban trajectories on the Zimbabwean plateau	p. 705
Settlement area and communication in African towns and cities	p. 732
References	p. 750
Index	p. 835
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