African Iron Production and Iron-Working Technologies: Methods
Louise Iles
Iron production was a particularly important precolonial African technology, with iron becoming a central component of socioeconomic life in many societies across the continent. ...
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Ancient Developments in the Middle Senegal Valley and the Inland Niger Delta
Alioune Dème
The study of West Africa has contributed to the expansion of comparative arid-lands floodplain prehistory, from both the data collection (cultural and historical) and the theoretical ...
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Archaeozoology: Methods
Veerle Linseele
This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Please check back later for the full article.
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The Bantu Expansion
Koen Bostoen
The Bantu Expansion stands for the concurrent dispersal of Bantu languages and Bantu-speaking people from an ancestral homeland situated in the Grassfields region in the borderland between ...
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Ceramics, Foodways, and Consumption: Methods
Liza Gijanto
Analysis of ceramics in archaeological contexts has provided a range of information regarding African history. Archaeologists have approached ceramics as a craft as well as an indicator of ...
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Development of Plant Food Production in the West African Savannas: Archaeobotanical Perspectives
Katharina Neumann
The West African savannas are a major area of independent plant domestication, with pearl millet, African rice, fonio, several legumes, and vegetable crops originating there. For ...
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Documenting Precolonial Trade in Africa
Shadreck Chirikure
Promoted by necessity, scarcity, and/or abundance, trade is one of the most essential cultural behaviors that promoted contact and exchange of ideas, commodities, and services between ...
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Ethnographic Analogy in Archaeology: Methodological Insights from Southern Africa
Mark McGranaghan
Analogical arguments are central to and pervasive within archaeological discourse. Within these arguments, ethnographic analogies are often seen as being particularly problematic exercises ...
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Farming and Herding in Eastern Africa: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives
Freda Nkirote M'Mbogori
The inception of agriculture in eastern Africa is a major topic of discussion among Africanist archaeologists, although very sparse evidence exists. Questions range from whether ...
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Food Production in the Forest Zone of West Africa: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives
Richard T. Chia and A. Catherine D'Andrea
Recent narratives on the origin of food production in the West African forest zone have replaced earlier diffusion-based models with viewpoints that emphasize the diversity of sources for ...
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