Archaeology of African Plant Use

Archaeology of African Plant Use PDF Author: Chris J Stevens
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315434008
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The first major synthesis of African archaeobotany in decades, this book focuses on Paleolithic archaeobotany and the relationship between agriculture and social complexity. It explores the effects that plant life has had on humans as they evolved from primates through the complex societies of Africa, including Egypt, the Buganda Kingdom, southern African polities, and other regions. With over 30 contributing scholars from 12 countries and extensive illustrations, this volume is an essential addition to our knowledge of humanity’s relationship with plants.

Archaeology of African Plant Use

Archaeology of African Plant Use PDF Author: Chris J Stevens
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315434008
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book

Book Description
The first major synthesis of African archaeobotany in decades, this book focuses on Paleolithic archaeobotany and the relationship between agriculture and social complexity. It explores the effects that plant life has had on humans as they evolved from primates through the complex societies of Africa, including Egypt, the Buganda Kingdom, southern African polities, and other regions. With over 30 contributing scholars from 12 countries and extensive illustrations, this volume is an essential addition to our knowledge of humanity’s relationship with plants.

Windows on the African Past

Windows on the African Past PDF Author: Ahmed G. Fahmy
Publisher: Africa Magna Verlag
ISBN: 3937248323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Archaeobotany has significantly increased our knowledge of the relationships between humans and plants throughout the ages. As is amply illustrated in this volume, botanical remains preserved in archaeological contexts have great potential to inform us about past environments and the various methods used by ancient peoples to exploit and cultivate plants. This volume presents the proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on African Archaeobotany (IWAA) held at Helwan University in Cairo, Egypt, on 13-15 June 2009. Studies presented herein clearly illustrate that African archaeobotany is a dynamic field, with many advances in techniques and important case studies presented since the first meeting of IWAA held in 1994. Authors have employed classical and new archaeobotanical techniques, in addition to linguistics and ethnoarchaeology to increase our knowledge about the role of plants in ancient African societies. This book covers a wide range of African countries including Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Canary Islands. It is of interest to archaeobotanists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, agronomists, and plant ecologists.

Plants and People in the African Past

Plants and People in the African Past PDF Author: Anna Maria Mercuri
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319898396
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
There is an essential connection between humans and plants, cultures and environments, and this is especially evident looking at the long history of the African continent. This book, comprising current research in archaeobotany on Africa, elucidates human adaptation and innovation with respect to the exploitation of plant resources. In the long-term perspective climatic changes of the environment as well as human impact have posed constant challenges to the interaction between peoples and the plants growing in different countries and latitudes. This book provides an insight into/overview of the manifold routes people have taken in various parts Africa in order to make a decent living from the provisions of their environment by bringing together the analyses of macroscopic and microscopic plant remains with ethnographic, botanical, geographical and linguistic research. The numerous chapters cover almost all the continent countries, and were prepared by most of the scholars who study African archaeobotany, i.e. the complex and composite history of plant uses and environmental transformations during the Holocene.

The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa

The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa PDF Author: Marijke van der Veen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9781441933164
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
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.

The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa

The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa PDF Author: Marijke van der Veen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475767307
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
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.

Origins of African Plant Domestication

Origins of African Plant Domestication PDF Author: Jack R. Harlan
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110806371
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description


Fields of Change

Fields of Change PDF Author: René T. J. Cappers
Publisher: Barkhuis
ISBN: 907792230X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
This volume contains fifteen papers given at the International Workshop on African Archaeobotany in Groningen in 2003. Several papers deal with the domestication history and related aspects of specific plants, including wheat (Triticum), rice (Oryza), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), fig (Ficus), cotton (Gossypium), silk-cotton (Ceiba pentandra) and baobab (Adansonia digitata). Other contributions discuss the exploitation of woody vegetations, members of the sedge family (Cyperaceae) and the botanical composition of mummy garlands. Three papers present the subfossil plant remains from Egyptian sites: Pharaonic caravan routes through the Theban Desert, Predynastic Adaïma and Napatan to Islamic Qasr Ibrim. The last contribution presents an update inventory of the ancient plant remains present in the Agricultural Museum (Dokki, Cairo). The book covers a wide range of countries and includes Namibia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Canary Isles, Libya and Egypt.

Ancient Plants and People

Ancient Plants and People PDF Author: Marco Madella
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816598681
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Mangroves and rice, six-row brittle barley and einkorn wheat. Ancient crops for prehistoric people. What do they have in common? All tell us about the lives and cultures of long ago, as humans cultivated or collected these plants for food. Exploring these and other important plants used for millennia by humans, Ancient Plants and People presents a wide-angle view of the current state of archaeobotanical research, methods, and theories. Food has both a public and a private role, and it permeates the life of all people in a society. Food choice, production, and distribution probably represent the most complex indicators of social life, and thus a study of foods consumed by ancient peoples reveals many clues about their lifestyles. But in addition to yielding information about food production, distribution, preparation, and consumption, plant remains recovered from archaeological sites offer precious insights on past landscapes, human adaptation to climate change, and the relationship between human groups and their environment. Revealing important aspects of past human societies, these plant-driven insights widen the spectrum of information available to archaeologists as we seek to understand our history as a biological and cultural species. Often answers raise more questions. As a result, archaeobotanists are constantly pushed to reflect on the methodological and theoretical aspects of their discipline. The contributors discuss timely methodological issues and engage in debates on a wide range of topics from plant utilization by hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists, to uses of ancient DNA. Ancient Plants and People provides a global perspective on archaeobotanical research, particularly on the sophisticated interplay between the use of plants and their social or environmental context.

Food, fuel and fields

Food, fuel and fields PDF Author: Katharina Neumann
Publisher: Heinrich-Barth-Institut
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Based on papers from the 3rd International Workshop on African Archaeobotany, Frankfurt, Germany, July 5-7, 2000

The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology PDF Author: Peter Mitchell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191626147
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1080

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Book Description
Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history, ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.