The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Marijke van der Veen

   Pages 1-10

3. Sorghum in the Economy of the Early Neolithic Nomadic Tribes at Nabta Playa, Southern Egypt

   • Krystyna Wasylikowa, Jeff Dahlberg

   Pages 11-31

4. Wild Grasses as ‘Neolithic’ Food Resources in the Eastern Sahara

   • Hala Barakat, Ahmed Gamal el-Din Fahmy

   Pages 33-46

5. The Use of Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry in the Identification of Ancient Sorghum Seeds

   • Edward Biehl, Fred Wendorf, Warren Landry, Asrat Desta, Leilani Watrous

   Pages 47-53

6. Ancient DNA from Sorghum

   • Peter Rowley-Conwy, William Deakin, Charles H. Shaw

   Pages 55-61

7. Missing Plant Foods? Where is the Archaeobotanical Evidence for Sorghum and Finger Millet in East Africa?

   • Ruth Young, Gill Thompson

   Pages 63-72

8. Early Plant Food Production in the West African Sahel

   • Katharina Neumann

   Pages 73-80

9. The Exploitation of Wild and Domesticated Food Plants at Settlement Mounds in North-East Nigeria (1800 cal BC to Today)

   • Marlies Klee, Barbara Zach

   Pages 81-88

10. Indications for Agroforestry

    • Stefanie Kahlheber

    Pages 89-100

11. Ethnoarchaeological Approaches to the Study of Prehistoric Agriculture in the Highlands of Ethiopia

    • Catherine D’Andrea, Diane Lyons, Mitiku Haile, Ann Butler

    Pages 101-122

12. The Ethnobotany of Lathyrus Sativus L. in the Highlands of Ethiopia

    • Ann Butler, Zelealem Tesfay, Catherine D’Andrea, Diane Lyons

    Pages 123-136

13. The Agricultural Foundation of the Aksumite Empire, Ethiopia

    • Sheila Boardman

    Pages 137-147

14. Wine Production and Consumption in Pharaonic Egypt

    • Mary Anne Murray

    Pages 149-169

15. The Food and Fodder Supply to Roman Quarry Settlements in the Eastern Desert of Egypt

    • Marijke van der Veen

    Pages 171-183

16. Trade and Subsistence at the Roman Port of Berenike, Red Sea Coast, Egypt

    • René Cappers

    Pages 185-197

17. The Use of Imported and Local Wood Species at the Roman Port of Berenike, Red Sea Coast, Egypt

    • Caroline Vermeeren

    Pages 199-204

18. Charcoal from West African Savanna Sites

    • Katharina Neumann

    Pages 205-219

19. Fuels for the Furnace

    • Gill Thompson, Ruth Young

    Pages 221-239

20. Reconstructing the Woody Resources of the Medieval Kingdom of Alwa, Sudan

    • Caroline R. Cartwright

    Pages 241-259

This volume presents a completely new and very substantial body of information about the origin of agriculture and plant use in Africa. All the evidence is very recent and for the first time all this archaeobotanical evidence is brought together in one volume (at present the information is unpublished or published in many disparate journals, confer­ ence reports, monographs, site reports, etc. ). Early publications concerned with the origins of African plant domestication relied almost exclusively on inferences made from the modem distribution of the wild progenitors of African cultivars; there existed virtually no archaeobotanical data at that time. Even as recently as the early 1990s direct evidence for the transition to farming and the relative roles of indigenous versus Near Eastern crops was lacking for most of Africa. This volume changes that and presents a wide range of ex­ citing new evidence, including case studies from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, and Sudan, which range in date from 8000 BP to the present day. The volume ad­ dresses topics such as the role of wild plant resources in hunter-gatherer and farming com­ munities, the origins of agriculture, the agricultural foundation of complex societies, long-distance trade, the exchange of foods and crops, and the human impact on local vege­ tation-all key issues of current research in archaeology, anthropology, agronomy, ecol­ ogy, and economic history.

• Neolithic
• Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• agriculture
• chromatography
• food
• forestry
• wood

• School of Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester, Leicester, England

  Marijke Veen

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