LESSER-KNOWN AFRICAN TUBER CROPS AND THEIR ROLE IN PREHISTORY (original) (raw)
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The diffusion of cassava in Africa: lexical and other evidence
Cassava was domesticated in Central America some 9000 years ago. The Portuguese carried it from Brazil to Africa in the late sixteenth century as a cheap staple to feed slaves. It seems likely that it was introduced into multiple locations rapidly, as borrowings from Portuguese mandioca are found is widely scattered parts of West Africa. Cassava was rapidly taken up by African farmers near the coast, but only began to penetrate the interior in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Due to the highly toxic characteristics of bitter cassava, the techniques of processing it travelled with the plant itself and are found all over Africa. From this point we find both a large number of local roots, comparing cassava to indigenous tubers, and also to the silk-cotton tree. Some peoples, such as the Hausa and Bambara seem to been important secondary distributors of cassava, as their name is borrowed into many surrounding languages. The paper groups the main lexemes identified for cassava, plots them on maps and produces a synthesis of the introduction and spread of cassava in Africa.
2017
This chapter provides a review of the currently available archaeological evidence relating to the transition to food production in eastern Africa, and some of the supporting linguistic and genetic evidence. In broad terms, livestock herding preceded crop cultivation in the region, with an initial emphasis on sheep and goats, commencing around 4500 to 5000 years ago. By around 3000 years ago, fullblown pastoralist societies with an emphasis on cattle herding occupied much of the savannah areas. From ca. 2500 years ago, metal using farming communities, practicing hoe cultivation of roots crops and cereals were also present, interacting with both pastoralist and autochthonous hunting-gathering-fishing communities. These interactions gave rise to diverse ethnic mosaics, alongside extensive genetic and linguistic exchanges.
Towards a history of foodways in Africa before the 20th century
Afriques, 2014
This collection of papers aims to present the advances in knowledge of the social and cultural construction of food practices in Africa before the 20th century. In general, the history of food and foodways is a relatively young field of research, recently renewed through its encounter with the history of globalization. Nonetheless, Africa still remains marginal in this field, even if historians of Africa explored this subject very early on, at the same time as it was being developed in Europe. 1 2 In formulating our call for papers for this collection, we wished to highlight the methodological contribution of this field to African history as a whole. Writing the history of food and foodways in Africa, and particularly for the periods before the 20th century, often draws upon other disciplines, such as archaeology and comparative linguistics, which also raise questions concerning the distant past. Archaeological research is becoming increasingly concerned with relatively recent periods, confronting data with texts and oral investigations, and it promises to significantly renew our understanding of food practices. The vitality of the archaeology of historical periods in Africa in the field of foodways contributes substance to this collection, which follows close behind the publication this year of an issue on the same topic in the African Archaeological Review. 2 For historians, the study of food also implies a new reading and analysis of the most classical sources through the lens of new questions. Contrary to common opinion, food and foodways are not the poor cousin of African historical records, particularly before 1900; in fact, the opposite is often true, A large number of the sources on this history, traveller's tales, even favour this topic, which is conducive to long and sometimes very technical discussions. Even in the context of literate cultures, in Africa as elsewhere, these types of narratives contain a large part of the information on past food practices. The history of food and foodways thus provides an opportunity to critically reread these texts, evaluating not only the role of the subjective perspective of the travellers, their cultural baggage, and their lived experience, but also the information Towards a history of foodways in Africa before the 20th century Afriques, 05 | 2014
archaeological and anthropological sciences, 2021
While narratives of the spread of agriculture are central to interpretation of African history, hard evidence of past crops and cultivation practices are still few. This research aims at filling this gap and better understanding the evolution of agriculture and foodways in West Africa. It reports evidence from systematic flotation samples taken at the settlement mounds of Sadia (Mali), dating from 4 phases (phase 0=before first-third century AD; phase 1=mid eighth-tenth c. AD; phase 2=tenth-eleventh c. AD; phase 3=twelfth-late thirteenth c. AD). Flotation of 2200 l of soil provided plant macro-remains from 146 archaeological samples. As on most West African sites, the most dominant plant is pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum). But from the tenth century AD, sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and African rice (Oryza glaberrima) appear in small quantities, and fonio (Digitaria exilis) and barnyard millet/hungry rice (Echinochloa sp.), sometimes considered weeds rather than staple crops, are found in large quantities. Some samples also show remains of tree fruits from savannah parklands, such as baobab (Adansonia digitata), marula (Sclerocarya birrea), jujube (Ziziphus sp.), shea butter (Vittelaria paradoxa) and African grapes (Lannea microcarpa). Fonio and Echinochloa sp. cultivation appears here to be a later addition that helped to diversify agriculture and buffer against failures that might affect the monoculture of pearl millet. This diversification at the end of the 1st millennium AD matches with other evidence found in West Africa.