The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa

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for the first time all this archaeobotanical evidence is brought together in one volume (at present the information is unpublished or published in many disparate journals, confer­ ence reports, monographs, site reports, etc.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.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction.- 2. Sorghum in the Economy of the Early Neolithic Nomadic Tribes at Nabta Playa, Southern Egypt.- 3. Wild Grasses as ‘Neolithic’ Food Resources in the Eastern Sahara: A Review of the Evidence from Egypt.- 4. The Use of Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry in the Identification of Ancient Sorghum Seeds.- 5. Ancient DNA from Sorghum: The Evidence from Qasr Ibrim, Egyptian Nubia.- 6. Missing Plant Foods? Where Is the Archaeobotanical Evidence for Sorghum and Finger Millet in East Africa?.- 7. Early Plant Food Production in the West African Sahel: New Evidence.- 8. The Exploitation of Wild and Domesticated Food Plants at Settlement Mounds in North-East Nigeria (1800 cal BC to Today).- 9. Indications for Agroforestry: Archaeobotanical Remains of Crops and Woody Plants from Medieval Saouga, Burkina Faso.- 10. Ethnoarchaeological Approaches to the Study of Prehistoric Agriculture in the Highlands of Ethiopia.- 11. The Ethnobotany of Lathyrus sativus L. in the Highlands of Ethiopia.- 12. The Agricultural Foundation of the Aksumite Empire, Ethiopia: An Interim Report.- 13. Wine Production and Consumption in Pharaonic Egypt.- 14. The Food and Fodder Supply to Roman Quarry Settlements in the Eastern Desert of Egypt.- 15. Trade and Subsistence at the Roman Port of Berenike, Red Sea Coast, Egypt.- 16. The Use of Imported and Local Wood Species at the Roman Port of Berenike, Red Sea Coast, Egypt.- 17. Charcoal from West African Savanna Sites: Questions of Identification and Interpretation.- 18. Fuels for the Furnace: Recent and Prehistoric Ironworking in Uganda and Beyond.- 19. Reconstructing the Woody Resources of the Medieval Kingdom of Alwa, Sudan.- 20. The Selection of Plant Fibers and Wood in the Manufacture of Organic Household Items from theEl-Gabalein Area, Egypt.