The Nilotic Contribution to Bantu Africa

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8979211
AutoresRoland Oliver (Universidad de Londres, autor correspondente)
Ano1982
Volume23
Fascículo4
Páginas433-442
Data de publicação1982-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021853700021289
OpenAlexW1976433321
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas15
Referências citadas17

It is argued that the Nilotic contribution to Bantu Africa consisted essentially in the infiltration of Early Iron Age communities practising a mainly agricultural economy in certain specially favourable environments by a new mode of food production in which cattle-keeping played an important part. This new way of life made possible the food-producing occupation of the drier parts of Bantu Africa, and the interaction between the new and old kinds of food-producers was the essential feature of the Later Iron Age. Wherever the new elements were present, settlement patterns became more dispersed, iron-working and pottery became the occupations of specialists, systems of inheritance changed from matrilineal to patrilineal forms, and political systems tended to become more centralized through the domination of settled cultivators by more mobile and warlike pastoral elites. Although chronological data for the Later Iron Age is as yet greatly inferior to that for the Early Iron Age, it seems likely that the process of Nilotic infiltration began during the last two or three centuries of the first millennium a.d., and spread southward through the centre of the subcontinent, so as to reach the western parts of Zambia and Zimbabwe by the tenth century. The subsequent interaction between the two kinds of food-production came about more gradually over two or three further centuries, and involved many varieties of local evolution in different areas. In southern Zaire, Zambia and Zimbabwe the local development of metallurgical techniques during this period was as significant as the introduction of pastoralism. But, overall, the Nilotic contribution provided the most essential features of the Later Iron Age

Ancient history · Archaeology · Bantu languages · Ethnology · Geography · Igbo · Livestock · Pastoralism · Pottery · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · History · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology