Ceramic Production and Dietary Changes at Juffure, Gambia

Gijanto, Liza; Walshaw, Sarah

doi:10.1007/s10437-014-9150-y

Cited by 22 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…As detailed in chapters 2 and 3, American crops took centuries to become staples in Banda. We find a similar hesitancy to abandon local crops in almost all cases where systematic recovery and analysis of plant remains has been pursued (Gijanto and Walshaw 2014;Esterhuysen and Hardwick 2017;Widgren et al 2016), an important distinction since maize presence is often inferred indirectly (e.g., see review in Widgren et al 2016). This finding is at odds with the historical literature, which focuses on coastal enclaves (e.g., Alpern 1992Alpern , 2008La Fleur 2012;McCann 2005), where agricultural production was often geared towards the provisioning of European trade ships (Carney and Rosomoff 2009).…”

Section: Shift S In Fo Od Avail Abilit Y and Ac Cess In Africa's Pastmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…As we saw in chapter 2, maize adoption was very slow even in Banda, which is ecologically well suited to its cultivation. And Banda was not alone in slowly adopting maize, as emerging archaeological studies show (Gijanto and Walshaw 2014;Esterhuysen and Hardwick 2017;Widgren et al 2016). In sum, as with earlier scholarship on this topic, the data used to estimate maize adoption by Cherniwchan and Moreno-Cruz is circumstantial evidence at best; the limited archaeological studies of maize's spread suggest that their model of spread is also empirically incorrect.…”

Section: Tasting Captivit Ymentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Despite a profusion of archaeology devoted to the study of the last five hundred years, few archaeologists have focused on agriculture during this period, largely ceding the topic to historians (see Gallagher's 2016 review), though this appears to be changing in recent years (e.g., Gijanto and Walshaw 2014;Logan and Cruz 2014;Logan 2016aLogan , 2016bMonroe and Janzen 2014;Walshaw 2010). There is considerable need for archaeological and linguistic study of the movement and roles of plants and animals during this period.…”

Section: Shift S In Fo Od Avail Abilit Y and Ac Cess In Africa's Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Scarcity Slot: Excavating Histories of Food Security in Ghana

Logan¹

2020

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The Scarcity Slot is the first book to critically examine food security in Africa’s deep past. Amanda L. Logan argues that African foodways have been viewed through the lens of “the scarcity slot,” a kind of othering based on presumed differences in resources. Weaving together archaeological, historical, and environmental data with food ethnography, she advances a new approach to building long-term histories of food security on the continent in order to combat these stereotypes. Focusing on a case study in Banda, Ghana that spans the past six centuries, The Scarcity Slot reveals that people thrived during a severe, centuries-long drought just as Europeans arrived on the coast, with a major decline in food security emerging only recently. This narrative radically challenges how we think about African foodways in the past, with major implications for the future.

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Section: Shift S In Fo Od Avail Abilit Y and Ac Cess In Africa's Pastmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Tasting Captivit Ymentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Shift S In Fo Od Avail Abilit Y and Ac Cess In Africa's Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Scarcity Slot: Excavating Histories of Food Security in Ghana

Logan¹

2020

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“…A second consideration is that deposits at Juffure represent multiple households or compounds on a neighborhood level within a village, whereas the Williams site is restricted to the family and at times their tenants. Additionally, at Juffure there are clear distinctions between what are considered episodic or special meals analogous to feasting and everyday fare (Gijanto and Walshaw 2014). The Williams trash is not as clearly segregated.…”

Section: Foodways Expressions Of Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Serving Status on the Gambia River Before and After Abolition

Gijanto¹

2020

Current Anthropology

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The Atlantic slave trade and its abolition created two distinct commercial spaces on the Gambia River that represent the use of similar tactics to project socioeconomic identities at different points in the Atlantic trade that are compared in this paper. First, the trading village of Juffure, at the heart of the Niumi polity's commercial center, gained prominence during the height of the trade in the eighteenth century. It became home to a multiethnic community whose residents were entangled to varying degrees in commerce. Community members asserted status and identity through material means that were based in established traditions of crafting and feasting. A second and distinct commercial space emerged at the city of Bathurst, which the British established following abolition in 1807. This new commercial center took shape with its own unique multiethnic community. At Bathurst the "Liberated Africans" utilized Western middle-class practices including meals to assert their identity as African elite. Thus, both the Liberated Africans and residents of Juffure used foodways to project specific identities to gain entry into commerce.

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“…Interestingly, the first divergence within African rice is inferred to be between western Guinea (coast and hill) races and those of the Niger basin (Meyer et al 2016). But currently, with the exception of the site of Juffure in Gambia, dated to 1650-1900 cal AD (Gijanto and Walshaw 2014) and from Sadia (this study), all the sites with domesticated African rice are coming from within the Niger River Basin itself, including the Inland Niger Delta and river banks, like the Dendi in North Benin (Bedaux et al 1978;Champion andFuller 2018a, 2018b;Murray 2007).…”

Section: African Ricementioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural diversification in West Africa: an archaeobotanical study of the site of Sadia (Dogon Country, Mali)

Champion

Fuller

Ozainne

et al. 2021

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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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.

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Ceramic Production and Dietary Changes at Juffure, Gambia

Cited by 22 publications

References 24 publications

The Scarcity Slot: Excavating Histories of Food Security in Ghana

The Scarcity Slot: Excavating Histories of Food Security in Ghana

Serving Status on the Gambia River Before and After Abolition

Agricultural diversification in West Africa: an archaeobotanical study of the site of Sadia (Dogon Country, Mali)

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