Swahili Urbanisation, Trade and Food Production: Botanical perspectives from Pemba Island, Tanzania, AD 600-1500

Walshaw, Sarah

doi:10.30861/9781407314167

Cited by 21 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…in Rwanda, and sites on Pemba Island off the coast of Tanzania from around 700 AD (Eichhorn and Neumann 2015;Giblin and Fuller 2011;Walshaw 2005), and if identification criteria can be developed it would be worth revisiting these to assess if they represent greater yam or other taxa like African yams, or taro.…”

Section: Greater Yammentioning

confidence: 99%

Asian Crop Dispersal in Africa and Late Holocene Human Adaptation to Tropical Environments

et al. 2019

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Occupation of the humid tropics by Late Holocene food producers depended on the use of vegetative agricultural systems. A small number of vegetative crops from the Americas and Asia have come to dominate tropical agriculture globally in these warm and humid environments, due to their ability to provide reliable food output with low labour inputs, as well as their suitability to these environments. The prehistoric arrival in Africa of Southeast Asian crops, in particular banana, taro and greater yam but also sugar cane and others, is commonly regarded as one of the most important examples of transcontinental exchanges in the tropics. Although chronologies of food-producer expansions in Central Africa are increasingly gaining resolution, we have very little evidence for the agricultural systems used in this region. Researchers have recovered just a handful of examples of archaeobotanical banana, taro and sugar cane remains, and so far none from greater yam. Many of the suggested dispersal routes have not been tested with chronological, ecological and linguistic evidence of food producers. While the impact of Bantu-speaking people has been emphasised, the role of non-Bantu farmers speaking Ubangi and Central Sudanic languages who have expanded from the (north)east has hardly been considered. This article will review the current hypotheses on dispersal routes and suggest that transmissions via Northeast Africa should become a new focus of research on the origins of Asian vegeculture crops in Africa.

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Section: Greater Yammentioning

confidence: 99%

Asian Crop Dispersal in Africa and Late Holocene Human Adaptation to Tropical Environments

et al. 2019

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“…), were also being farmed in eastern Africa prior to 2000 cal yr BP (Chami, 2001; Mbida et al, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006; Lejju et al, 2005, 2006; De Langhe, 2007), and Kilimanjaro may have been an early locus for banana cultivation, though the evidence is inconclusive (Sinclair, 2007; Neumann and Hildebrand, 2009; Shipton et al, 2016). Coastal archaeological records could suggest that the widespread adoption of Asian domesticates by eastern African farmers did not occur until the last millennium (Walshaw, 2015; Crowther et al, 2018). Iron smelting may have also occurred on Kilimanjaro over the last two thousand years, though archaeologists have yet to document iron-working remains, suggesting it was extremely limited in scope compared to operations underway in the Pare Mountains from the second half of the first millennium (Iles et al, 2018; Iles, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A 3000-year record of vegetation changes and fire at a high-elevation wetland on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

et al. 2020

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Kilimanjaro is experiencing the consequences of climate change and multiple land-use pressures. Few paleoenvironmental and archeological records exist to examine historical patterns of late Holocene ecosystem changes on Kilimanjaro. Here we present pollen, phytolith, and charcoal (>125 μm) data from a palustrine sediment core that provide a 3000-year radiocarbon-dated record collected from a wetland near the headwaters of the Maua watershed in the alpine and ericaceous vegetation zones. From 3000 to 800 cal yr BP, the pollen, phytolith, and charcoal records show subtle variability in ericaceous and montane forest assemblages with apparent multicentennial secular variability and a long-term pattern of increasing Poaceae and charcoal. From 800 to 600 cal yr BP, montane forest taxa varied rapidly, Cyperaceae abundances increased, and charcoal remained distinctly low. From 600 yr cal BP to the present, woody taxa decreased, and ericaceous taxa and Poaceae dominated, with a conspicuously increased charcoal influx. Uphill wetland ecosystems are crucial for ecological and socioeconomic resilience on and surrounding the mountain. The results were synthesized with the existing paleoenvironmental and archaeological data to explore the high spatiotemporal complexity of Kilimanjaro and to understand historical human-environment interactions. These paleoenvironmental records create a long-term context for current climate, biodiversity, and land-use changes on and around Kilimanjaro.

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“…Although this specimen has the distinctive club shape of domesticated Pennisetum, it is much smaller than domestic varieties. However, diminutive forms of domesticated pearl millet have been recorded archaeobotanically elsewhere in eastern Africa (Crowther et al, 2014;Walshaw, 2005). The possible explanations for the smaller size include harvesting immature grains, discard of small basal grains from the inflorescence shaft, and introgression from wild Pennisetum.…”

Section: Macrobotanical Remainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Kalundu Mound, Zambia: Implications for the Timing of Social and Subsistence Transitions in Iron Age Southern Africa

et al. 2021

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Novel trajectories of food production, urbanism, and inter-regional trade fueled the emergence of numerous complex Iron Age polities in central and southern Africa. Renewed research and re-dating efforts in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and along the Swahili Coast are transforming models for how inter-regional interaction spheres contributed to these patterns. While societies in present-day Zambia played an important role in the trade of copper, ivory, gold, and other resources between central and southern Africa, little is known about lifeways during the rise of social complexity in this region. This paper reports the results of re-excavation at Kalundu Mound on the Batoka Plateau of southern Zambia, one of the iconic mound sites of the Iron Age “Kalomo Culture.” New radiocarbon dates were combined with the original dates in a series of Bayesian models, indicating that previous chronologies for the site are not reliable and that the mound site likely developed rapidly from AD 1190 to 1410. Archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, and paleo-proteomic analyses of excavated materials suggests a broad subsistence base combining wild and domesticated species, including the first reported evidence for finger millet (Eleusine coracana) in the region. Considering these findings, it is necessary to re-evaluate the temporal context of the Kalomo site-group, and to also systematically reinvestigate the systems of exchange and subsistence that supported Later Iron Age complexity.

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Swahili Urbanisation, Trade and Food Production: Botanical perspectives from Pemba Island, Tanzania, AD 600-1500

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Asian Crop Dispersal in Africa and Late Holocene Human Adaptation to Tropical Environments

Asian Crop Dispersal in Africa and Late Holocene Human Adaptation to Tropical Environments

A 3000-year record of vegetation changes and fire at a high-elevation wetland on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

Revisiting Kalundu Mound, Zambia: Implications for the Timing of Social and Subsistence Transitions in Iron Age Southern Africa

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