Article contents
Prehistory in the upper Nile Basin1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
Extract
The results of recent archaeological research in the Upper Nile basin are summarized and placed within the context of the anthropological-historical debate concerning the origins of the Nuer, Dinka and Atuot as distinct ethnic groupings. The archaeological evidence demonstrates a considerable antiquity for cattle-keeping in the region, the existence of what appears to be a very widespread cultural tradition in the late first millennium a.d. characterized by a distinctive form of burial, and a hiatus in settlement in the area east of Rumbek early in the present millennium, possibly around the time when humped cattle were introduced further north. The implications of these data for the explanation of the origins of the Luo migrations are discussed.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987
References
2 I hasten to exclude the meticulous work of Douglas Johnson from this charge; see Johnson, D. H., ‘The fighting Nuer: primary sources and the origins of a stereotype’, Africa, LI, i (1981), 508–27;CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘Tribal boundaries and border wars: Nuer—Dinka relations in the Sobat and Zaraf valleys, c. 1860–1976’, J. Afr. Hist., XXIII, ii (1982), 183–203.Google Scholar
3 Recently the object of detailed study by Raymond Kelly, C., The Nuer Conquest (Ann Arbor, 1985).Google Scholar
4 Kleppe, E. J., ‘The debbas on the White Nile, southern Sudan’, in Mack, J. and Robertshaw, P. (eds.), Culture History in the Southern Sudan (Nairobi, 1982), 59–70.Google Scholar
5 Newcomer, P. J., ‘The Nuer are Dinka: an essay on origins and environmental determinis’, Man (n.s.), VII, i (1972), 5–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 E.g. MacDermot, B. H., ‘The Nuer are not Dinka’, Man (n.s.), VII, iii (1972), 480;Google ScholarGlickman, M., ‘The Dinka and the Nuer’, Man (n.s.), IX, i (1974), 141–2.Google Scholar
7 Southall, A., ‘Nuer and Dinka are people: ecology, ethnicity and logical possibility’, Man (n.s.), XI, iv (1976), 463–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Kelly, Nuer Conquest, particularly chapter 2.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., 10–23. It is impossible to do justice in the space of this article to Kelly's comprehensive and closely argued work.
10 Burton, J. W., ‘Atuot ethnicity: an aspect of Nilotic ethnology’, Africa, LI, i (1981), 496–507; quotation from p. 496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Ibid.; also Burton, J. W., ‘Some observations on the social history of the Atuot dialect of Nilotic’, in Schadeberg, T. C. and Bender, M. L. (eds.), Nilo-Saharan: Proceedings of the first Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Leiden, September 8–10, 1980 (Dordrecht, 1981), 133–42;Google Scholar‘The wave is my mother's husband: a piscatorial theme in pastoral Nilotic ethnology’, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, XXI, no. 84 (1981), 459–77.Google Scholar
12 Burton, ‘Some observations’, 137, 340.Google Scholar
13 Ibid. 136, citing G. Lienhardt.
14 Burton, ‘The wave is my mother's husband’, 468.Google Scholar
15 Ibid. 464.
16 Ibid. 465.
17 Burton, ‘Some observations’, 139–40.Google Scholar This hypothesis is not incompatible with that of Kelly, Nuer conquest.
18 Burton, ‘The wave is my mother's husband’, n. 12.Google Scholar
19 The particular term preferred is of little importance in the context of this discussion.Google Scholar
20 Hodder, I. R., ‘The distribution of material culture items in the Baringo district, W. Kenya’, Man (n.s.), XII, ii (1977), 239–69;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, Symbols in Action (Cambridge, 1982). See also Mack, John, ‘Material culture and ethnic identity in Southeastern Sudan’, in Mack and Robertshaw, Culture History in the Southern Sudan, 111–30.Google Scholar
21 However, one must not forget in this context the possible implications for the understanding of variations in material culture of Johnson's reassessment of the ‘Fighting Nuer’: see note 2 above.Google Scholar
22 Sometimes written as toc or toic.Google Scholar
23 Robertshaw, Peter and Siiriäinen, Ari, ‘Excavations in Lakes Province, Southern Sudan’, Azania, XX (1985), 89–166; this article comprises the detailed excavation reports.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 David, Nicholas, Harvey, Paul and Goudie, C. J., ‘Excavations in the Southern Sudan, 1979’, Azania, XVI (1981), 7–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25 Ibid., 27, 30.
26 L. Schepartz in Robertshaw and Siiriäinen, ‘Excavations’.Google Scholar
27 Robertshaw and Siiriäinen, ‘Excavations’.Google Scholar
28 David et al. ‘Excavations’, 40–1.Google Scholar
29 Huffman, T. N., ‘Ceramics, classification and Iron Age entities’, African Studies, XXXIX (1980), 123–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30 Kieppe, E. J., ‘Towards a prehistory of the riverain Nilotic Sudan: archaeological excavations in the Er Renk District’, Nubian Letters, no. 1 (1983), 14–20; and pers. comm.Google Scholar
31 David, Nicholas, ‘The BIEA Southern Sudan expedition of 1979: interpretation of the archaeological data’, in Mack and Robertshaw, Culture history in the Southern Sudan, 49–57; see p. 54.Google Scholar
32 This decoration is described in the original report on Jebel Tukyi as ‘plaited-fibre roulette’ (David et al. ‘Excavations’, 29).Google Scholar However, examination of the sherds, currently housed in the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, has convinced me that they are decorated with woven-mat impressions.
33 Siiriäinen, Ari, ‘Two Southern Sudanese pottery traditions in a historical perspective’. Norwegian Archaeological Review, XVII, i (1984), 11–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34 Kleppe as cited in footnotes 4 and 30.Google Scholar
35 Robertshaw and Siiriäinen, ‘Excavations’, 138–40.Google Scholar
36 See Robertshaw, Peter, ‘Eastern Equatoria in the context of later eastern African prehistory’, in Mack and Robertshaw, Culture history in the Southern Sudan, 89–100.Google Scholar
37 Ibid.
38 Ehret, Christopher, ‘Population movement and culture contact in the Southern Sudan, c. 3000 BC to AD 1000: a preliminary linguistic overview’, in Mack and Robertshaw, Culture history in the Southern Sudan, 19–48.Google ScholarEhret, on p. 27Google Scholar, uses the term ‘pre-Luo’, rather than ‘proto-Luo’. However, since in a historical sense we are referring here and later in this essay to the ancestors of the Luo, we will use the term ‘proto-Luo’ in preference to ‘pre-Luo’, which appears to have a distinct linguistic meaning, but as a historical term suggests something other than Luo.
39 McLaughlin, J., ‘Tentative time depths for Nuer, Dinka and Anuak’, J. Ethiopian Studies, V (1967), 13–27.Google Scholar Glickman, ‘The Dinka and the Nuer’ regards this ‘date’ as conservatively recent. However, given the various complexities of Nuer–Dinka relations, both present and historical, as outlined by Burton and Johnson, to put any trust in the glottochronological ‘date’ would seem to be extremely foolhardy. Furthermore, the concept of a linguistic ‘split’ with its connotations of a population separating at a single point in time into two isolated groups appears far too simplistic.
40 Kelly, Nuer conquest, 11.Google Scholar
41 Information collected by J. P. R. Coote and others during the 1981 fieldwork in the Southern Sudan of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. The second ‘l’ in ‘Gell’ is redundant.Google Scholar
42 Burton, John W., ‘God's ants: a study of Atuot religion’ (Ph.D. thesis, S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, 1978), 32.Google Scholar
43 Kelly, Nuer conquest, 16.Google Scholar
44 Lienhardt, G., Divinity and Experience: the Religion of the Dinka (Oxford, 1961), 187.Google Scholar The identity of the Ber Ajou is problematic: Southall, ‘Nuer and Dinka are people’, n. 17, suspects that they are Murle, who are also known as Beir.
45 Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience, 177.Google Scholar
46 David et at. ‘Excavations’, 32.Google ScholarVansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985), 187–8Google Scholar, cogently warns that the ascription of Dhang Rial to the Luel may well be ‘a Pope Johanna case’, that is, where a tradition is spuriously linked to an archaeological site to account for the latter's presence on the landscape.
47 Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience, 177, n. 2.Google Scholar
48 Crazzolara, J. P., The Lwoo; Part I: Lwoo migrations, Museum Combonianum no. 3 (Verona, 1950).Google Scholar The beginnings of the Luo migrations are conventionally dated to around the thirteenth or fourteenth century A.D.; see, for example, Cohen, D. W., ‘The River–Lake Nilotes from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century’, in Ogot, B. A. (ed.), Zamani: a Survey of East African History (rev. ed., Nairobi, 1973), 135–49, at p. 141.Google Scholar This dating is based on the Shilluk king-list, which is tied where possible to other sources, and on the assumption of thirty years to a generation and thirteen to a reign; see Ogot, B. A., ‘Kingship and statelessness among the Nilotes’, in Vansina, J., Mauny, R. and Thomas, L. V. (eds.), The Historian in Tropical Africa (London, 1964),284–304, at p. 289 n. 24.Google Scholar Given the uncertainties of this method of establishing chronological dates and the further difficulty of extrapolating from Shilluk origins to early movements from the Luo cradle-land, I prefer in this essay a cautiously vague dating for the beginnings of the Luo migrations.
49 Santandrea equates the Beer with the Ber Ajou. Santandrea, Stefano, Ethnogeography of the Bahr el Ghazal (Sudan), Museum Combonianum no. 37 (Bologna, 1981), 161.Google Scholar
50 Broadly defined to include the area administratively referred to on occasion as Lakes Province, as well as Bahr el Ghazal Province.Google Scholar
51 Santandrea, Ethno-geography, 149–58.Google Scholar
52 Ibid. 159.
53 As an archaeologist, I note with satisfaction Santandrea's plea (ibid. 154) for archaeological research, though I fear that the results presented in this paper may well not measure up to his expectations.
54 Cohen, ‘The River–Lake Nilotes’, and note 42 above.Google Scholar
55 Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience, 289;Google ScholarEvans-Pritchard, E. E., Nuer Religion (Oxford, 1956), 145.Google Scholar
56 Hobley, C. W., Eastern Uganda: an Ethnological Survey (London, 1902).Google Scholar
57 Indeed Siiriäinen ascribes the sites east of Rumbek to Central Sudanic-speakers; Siiriäinen, ‘Two Southern Sudanese pottery traditions’.Google Scholar
58 Soper, Robert, ‘Roulette decoration on African pottery: some technical distinctions and misconceptions and its significance in culture-historical reconstruction’, MILA VII (1984), 62–82.Google Scholar
59 Robertshaw, Peter and Collett, David, ‘A new framework for the study of early pastoral communities in East Africa’, J. Afr. Hist., XXIV, iii (1983), 289–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
60 David, ‘The BIEA Southern Sudan expedition’, 55;Google ScholarOliver, R., ‘Reflections on the British Institute's expeditions to the Southern Sudan, 1977–1981’, in Mack and Robertshaw, Culture History in the Southern Sudan, 165–71; see p. 168.Google Scholar
61 Kelly, Nuer Conquest; Southall, ‘Nuer and Dinka are people’.Google Scholar
62 Oliver, ‘Reflections’, 170.Google Scholar
- 7
- Cited by