Plants and People in the African Past: Progress in African Archaeobotany

ISBN-13: 9783319898384 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 576 str.

Anna Maria Mercuri; A. Catherine D'Andrea; Rita Fornaciari

Opis

There is an essential connection between humans and plants, cultures and environments, and this is especially evident looking at the long history of the African continent.

Spis treści

Introduction.- 1. Archaeobotanical study of plant diversity at Early Dynastic Helwan (3100-2600 B.C.); Egypt; Adel M. Ahmed et al.- 2. The archaeobotanical remains found in valley of the King (kv 63), Luxor, Egypt; Rim S. Hamdy, Ahmed G. Fahmy.- 3. Diet and trade in Amheida /Trimithis (Dakhleh Oasis - Egypt), new insights from the archaeobotanical analysis; Valentina Caracuta et al.- 4. Archaeobotanical studies from Hierakonpolis – evidence of food processing during the Predynastic period in Egypt; Elshafaey Abdelatif Elshafaey Attia et al.- 5. Grapes, raisins and wine? Archaeobotanical Finds from an Egyptian Monastery; Mennat-Allah El Dorry.- 6. Integrated analyses of ancient wild cereals from Takarkori rock shelter (SW Libya); Rita Fornaciari et al.- 7. The Holocene vegetation of Tin Hanakaten cave (Tassilin'Ajjer, Algerian Sahara central); Samira Amrani.- 8. The use of wild plants in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic of NW Africa: preliminary results from the paleoplant project. (formerly: Plant use in northern Africa during the Early Holocene); Yolanda Carrión et al.- Archaeology and Palaeoecology: integrated methods.- 9. The translocation of useful trees in African prehistory; Roger Blench.- 10. Mid-Holocene environmental change at Mtwapa Creek, Kenya: distinguishing human activity from regional ecological processes; Ryan M. Szymanski.- 11. Multiscalar perspectives on Holocene climatic and environmental changes: Saharan and Nile Corridor patterns with special consideration of Sai Island archaeological sites; Elisabeth Hildebrand et al.- 12. Pollen analyses of sediments from an archaeological deposit in Motako, southwest Nigeria; Kingsley C. Daraojimba et al.- 13. Pits at Pangwari: thoughts on the taphonomy of charcoals from several pits at a multi-phased Nok site, Central Nigeria; Alexa Höhn et al.- Plant Use, Agricultural History and Ethnoarchaeology: Foods and Fields.- 14. Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa by 1800 - a map and a gazetteer (formerly: Agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa 1800: a preliminary map); Mats Widgren.- 15. Agriculture and wild plant use in the Middle Senegal River Valley, ca. 800 BC - 1000 AD; Daphne Gallagher et al.- 16. The archaeobotany of the Late Stone Age (LSA) in Nigeria: a review; Emuobosa A. Orijemie.- 17. Cottoning on to cotton (Gossypium spp.) in Arabia and Africa in antiquity; Charlène Bouchaud et al.- 18. Sorghum Domestication and Diversification: A current archaeobotanical perspective (formerly: Sorghum domestication revisited); Dorian Q. Fuller, Chris Stevens.- 19. Pre-Aksumite culinary practice at the Mezber site, northern Ethiopia (formerly: Ethnoarchaeological and microbotanical studies of grindingstones from northern Ethiopia); A. Catherine D’Andrea et al.- Climate and Agrarian-Cultural Landscapes.- 20. Combined culture-vegetation-climate dynamics in the African Tropics: paleoenvironmental assessment of Late Iron Age vegetation change in the Ngotto Forest, Central African Republic; Christopher A. Kiahtipes.- 21. Filling the gap: evidence of sorghum cultivation and introduced west Africa crops in the Second Millennium BC at Kasala, Eastern Sudan (formerly: Filling the gap: new archaeobotanical evidence for 3rd-1st Millennium BCE agrucultural economy in Sudan and Ethiopia); Alemseged Beldados et al.-          22. New evidence on the development of millet and rice economies in the Niger River basin: archaeobotanical results from Benin; Louis Champion, Dorian Q. Fuller.- 23. Pollen-based landscape reconstruction and land-use history in the southern Tunisian desert margins since 6000BC (formerly: Anthropogenic impact and landscape shaping in southern Tunisia during the Holocene); Sahbi Jaouadi, Vincent Lebreton.- Index.

O autorze

Anna Maria Mercuri has a 30-years experience in Palynology and Archaeobotany. She contributed to the onset of the Laboratory of Palynology and Palaeobotany of Modena. Her lines of research are human impact, cultural landscapes, resource exploitation and human behaviour, in Northern-Africa and Italian sites.

KEY WORDS: palynology, palaeoethnobotany, botany, LTHI-Long Term Human Impact, LTE-Long-Term Ecology, Sahara, Northern Africa, Mediterranean basin, Lateglacial/Holocene.

Blurb

Read this book to better understand the complexity and diversity of the countries of Africa.

The contributions of this book investigate the adaptations and innovations that people on the African continent have developed in order to cope with their needs for food, housing and fuel in the different environments, like the Mediterranean, the desert and the tropical forest, and the changes of these environments through time.

To elucidate these past interrelationships between the human agent and the environment, palaeo/archaeobotanical approaches are essential. Plants are an important part of the human diet, provide construction material for shelters and energy as fuel, and, moreover, the physiognomy of landscapes is to a large extent shaped by plants, while at same time humans have and have had an important role in shaping African environments.

This book comprises the current state of the art of archaeobotanical research on the continent; archaeobotanists, botanists, anthropologists, ethnoarchaeologists, palaeoecologists, geographers and linguists bring together and discuss the evidence concerning matters such as: Plant use in foraging and agrarian societies, plant domestication, agricultural systems/history, foodways and culinary practices, human-environmental interactions, anthropic impacts and the spread of early agricultural communities.

This book is the outstanding outcome of the recent meeting IWAA8 of archaeobotanists working on the African continent in Modena in 2015. The results stress the importance of integrative methods, cooperation between disciplines, and of constant exchange of data and knowledge. The meetings of the International Workgroup for African Archaeobotany were founded in 1994 with the first meeting in Mogilany, Poland. Since then workshops of African Archaeobotany have been held regularly every three years, in Leicester (1997), Frankfurt/Main (2000), Groningen (2003), London (2006), Cairo (2009), Vienna (2012) and Modena (2015).