The Nile vs. the Rift: Exploring contrasts in the spread of food production in Africa ~4200 bp

Summary

Characterizing the patterns and processes of early food production across Africa is difficult because the continent’s large landmass, diverse physiography, and regionally specific environments and crops hinder generalization. Due to these challenges, accounts of early food production in Africa tend to be narrative syntheses: they either present a detailed sequence of developments in one specific region, or ‘follow’ the spread of food production from the earliest herding in the eastern Sahara <7000 bp to the arrival of livestock and crops at the southern tip of the continent ~2000 bp. Trans-regional comparisons present an alternative way to make sense of Africa’s tremendous diversity, but are seldom employed in an explicit manner. They can use similarities and contrasts between different areas to help explain variation in the causes and consequences for the spread of food production in distinct contexts. This paper compares two such instances ~4200 bp: the spread of southwest Asian crops and farming methods up the Nile Valley within areas where herding was already practiced, and the spread of herding as the initial form of food production in the eastern African rift system.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• New Perspectives on Agricultural Origins

Keywords

Spatial Coverage