Early food production in Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID18937985
AuthorsJohn Bower (0009-0005-8991-1939), John R Bower (Hess (United States), corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume4
Issue4
Pages130-139
Publication date1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEvolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1060-1538 • E-ISSN: 1520-6505
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/evan.1360040405
OpenAlexW1983426902
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited32

The study of early food production in sub‐Saharan Africa is at least as challenging as it is rewarding. Problems arise in large degree from the scarcity of relevant archeological material, particularly the remains of domesticated plants from prehistoric sites. This is attributable to several factors, including poor preservation, difficulties in recovering such material, and the limited amount of work so far invested in obtaining it. But, problems notwithstanding, fresh data and new methodological approaches have revealed aspects of early African food production that are interesting in themselves, as well as in global perspective. For example, contrary to what occurred in most other parts of the world, livestock herding in Africa often predated the earliest evidence of cultivation of domesticated plants. Moreover, the initial spread of food production throughout much of sub‐Saharan Africa was accompanied by iron, rather than lithic, technology. This overview of current knowledge about early African food production is aimed at highlighting developmental patterns while also exposing limitations in our understanding of these patterns. Because of Africa's vast size, uniform coverage in reasonable depth of all parts of the continent is not possible. Thus, for example, I will not explicitly cover the complex neolithic record from Africa's Mediterranean region. Instead, I will generally concentrate on bodies of data and lines of investigation that characterize distinctive features of the African version of initial steps in raising crops and animals

Agriculture · Agroforestry · Archaeology · Biology · Domestication · Economics · Food processing · Food security · Geography · Herding · Livestock · Natural resource economics · Paleoanthropology · Prehistory · Production (economics) · Scarcity · African Botany and Ecology Studies · Ecology · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

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