Bones, sex, and dolls: Solving a mystery in Central Africa and beyond

Maret, Pierre de

doi:10.1080/00934690.2016.1194066

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Such deep engagement with the forest may help explain the cache of 13 dwarf bovid metatarsals at Fukuchani. De Maret () demonstrated that ethnographically, bovid metapodials are commonly used as children's dolls and fertility symbols in central Africa and in numerous other contexts. Archaeologically, he notes that metapodials are associated with juvenile and some adult burials dating to the 9th–13th centuries CE in south‐eastern Congo.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast: The Fauna from Two Zanzibar Trading Locales

Prendergast

Morales

Crowther

et al. 2017

Intl J of Osteoarchaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa—now known as the ‘Swahili coast’—were involved in long‐distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non‐native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisation. Yet despite the potential contributions of faunal data to Swahili coast archaeology, few detailed zooarchaeological studies have been conducted. Here, we present an analysis of faunal remains from new excavations at two coastal Zanzibar trading locales: the small settlement of Fukuchani in the north‐west and the larger town of Unguja Ukuu in the south‐west. The occurrences of non‐native fauna at these sites—Asian black rat (Rattus rattus) and domestic chicken (Gallus gallus), as well as domestic cat (Felis catus)—are among the earliest in eastern Africa. The sites contrast with one another in their emphases on wild and domestic fauna: Fukuchani's inhabitants were economically and socially engaged with the wild terrestrial realm, evidenced not only through diet but also through the burial of a cache of wild bovid metatarsals. In contrast, the town of Unguja Ukuu had a domestic economy reliant on caprine herding, alongside more limited chicken keeping, although hunting or trapping of wild fauna also played an important role. Occupants of both sites were focused on a diversity of near‐shore marine resources, with little or no evidence for the kind of venturing into deeper waters that would have required investment in new technologies. Comparisons with contemporaneous sites suggest that some of the patterns at Fukuchani and Unguja Ukuu are not replicated elsewhere. This diversity in early Swahili coast foodways is essential to discussions of the agents engaged in long‐distance maritime trade. © 2017 The Authors International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast: The Fauna from Two Zanzibar Trading Locales

Prendergast

Morales

Crowther

et al. 2017

Intl J of Osteoarchaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The study of past children continues to develop as a subfield of archaeology. Archaeological literature prior to Lillehammer's (1989) seminal paper included few references to children and their childhood and picked up the pace from the year 2000 (e.g., Baxter 2005aBaxter , 2005bBird and Bliege-Bird 2000;Bugarin 2005;de Maret 2016;Grimm 2000;Kamp 2001Kamp , 2015Sofaer Derevenski 2000). Despite this increasing interest in children of the past, however, we remain far from a routine consideration of their impact on the archaeological record and have consequently erased a significant proportion of past populations.…”

Section: Archaeology Of Children and Their Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is It Ritual? Or Is It Children? Distinguishing Consequences of Play from Ritual Actions in the Prehistoric Archaeological Record

Langley¹,

Litster²

2018

Current Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper identifies a significant interpretive issue for prehistoric archaeology: distinguishing adult ritual actions from the activities of children in the archaeological record. Through examining ethnographic accounts of recent huntergatherer children and reconsidering archaeological patterns and assemblages in light of these data, we explore how the results of children's play can be-and likely have been-misinterpreted by archaeologists as evidence for adult ritual behavior in prehistoric contexts. Given that children were a significant component of past hunter-gatherer (and other) societies, the fact that the material components of their activities overlap tremendously with items used in adult rituals must be routinely considered by archaeologists if we are to reconstruct robust understandings of past peoples all over the globe.

show abstract

Subsistence mosaics, forager-farmer interactions, and the transition to food production in eastern Africa

Crowther

Prendergast

Fuller

et al. 2018

Quaternary International

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Bones, sex, and dolls: Solving a mystery in Central Africa and beyond

Cited by 4 publications

References 13 publications

Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast: The Fauna from Two Zanzibar Trading Locales

Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast: The Fauna from Two Zanzibar Trading Locales

Is It Ritual? Or Is It Children? Distinguishing Consequences of Play from Ritual Actions in the Prehistoric Archaeological Record

Subsistence mosaics, forager-farmer interactions, and the transition to food production in eastern Africa

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About