The Location for the Origin of Domesticated Sorghum in Africa: A Brief Review of Some Cultures in the Sahara, Nile, and Sahel

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent analyses have established the location for the origin of domesticated sorghum occurring in the far eastern Sahel of Sudan during the fourth millennium BC associated with the Late Neolithic Butana Group. For over a half century, sorghum domestication has been hypothesized as occurring somewhere in the Sahelian region, where it was finally discovered. However, questions remain as to why other earlier cultures in the Sahara, as well other early and contemporary ceramic-bearing cultures along the Nile Valley, all of which had access to wild stands of sorghum, did not initially domesticate it as happened with the Butana Group farther to the east. This paper will review particular cultures in these regions, their economic and cultural characteristics, and attempt to explain why the Butana Group was first to engage in the process of sorghum domestication in the far-eastern Sahel of Sudan.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36618.0