Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T00:51:07.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Nilotic Contribution to Bantu Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Roland Oliver
Roland Oliver
Affiliation:
S.O.A.S., University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 433 - 442
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Wilson, Monica and Thompson, Leonard (eds.), Oxford History of South Africa, I (Oxford, 1969), 130.Google Scholar

2 Murdock, G. P., Africa: its Peoples and their Culture History (New York, 1959), 332–3.Google Scholar

3 Phillipson, D. W., The Later Prehistory of Eastern and Southern Africa (London, 1977), 163.Google Scholar

4 de Maret, P., van Noten, F. and Cahen, D., ‘Radiocarbon dates from west central Africa: a synthesis,’ J. Afr. Hist., xviii, 4 (1977), 490.Google Scholar

5 Sutton, J. E. G. and Roberts, A. D., ‘Uvinza and its salt industry’, Azania, III (1968), 56.Google Scholar

6 de Maret, P., ‘New survey of archaeological research and dates for west-central and north-central Africa’, J. Afr. Hist., XXIII, 1 (1982), 6.Google Scholar

7 Cohen, D. W., The Historical Tradition of Busoga (Oxford, 1972), 104–5.Google Scholar

8 There are some possible candidates for the role of a pottery style intermediate in time between Early and Later Iron Age wares – e.g. Chobi ware from Uganda, ‘boudiné’ pottery from Rwanda and ‘Kisii soft ware’ from Kenya, but all seem rather rare and localized. Cf. Phillipson, , Later Prehistory, 163–5.Google Scholar

9 Ehret, C., Southern Nilotic History (Evanston, 1971), 29.Google Scholar

10 Lynch, B. M. and Robbins, L. H., ‘Cushitic and Nilotic Prehistory’, J. Afr. Hist., XX, 3 (1979), 324–7.Google Scholar

11 It has been suggested that the long co-existence of iron and stone implements in pastoral technologies in the Rift Valley may have been due to an absence of iron ore in the central Rift and to the ready availability of obsidian and ignimbrite. Bower, J. R. F. and Nelson, C. M., ‘Early pottery and pastoral cultures of the Central Rift Valley, Kenya’, Man, n.s., XII (1979), 564.Google Scholar

12 David, Nicholas, ‘The B.I.E.A. Southern Sudan Expedition of 1979’, in Mack, John and Robertshaw, Peter (eds.), Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Southern Sudan (in press).Google Scholar

13 Sutton, J. E. G., Archaeology of the Western Highlands of Kenya (Nairobi, 1973), 5–33.Google Scholar

14 Twisted-cord rouletted pottery has recently been found in association with flaked tools in the uppermost horizon of the site at Salasun in the Rift Valley near Lake Naivasha and dated to around the eighth century a.d. See Mgomezulu, G. G. Y., ‘Recent archaeological research and radiocarbon dates from eastern Africa’, J. Afr. Hist., XXII, 4 (1981).Google Scholar This dating, however, is derived from a sample of bone apatite, and the value of such material for radiocarbon dating has been called in question: Collett, D. and Robertshaw, P., ‘Dating the Pastoral Neolithic’ (in press).Google Scholar

15 Wilson, Monica, The Peoples of the Nyasa–Tanganyika Corridor (Cape Town, 1958), 46–9.Google Scholar

16 Robinson, K. R., ‘Preliminary report on the recent archaeology of Ngonde’, J. Afr. Hist., VII, 2 (1966), 169–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Phillipson, , Later Prehistory, 146.Google Scholar This contention has been called in question by dates in the first half of the first millennium a.d. for cattle remains in central Malawi and eastern Zambia: cf. Mgomezulu, , ‘Recent Archaeological Research’, 449.Google Scholar

18 Phillipson, D. W., ‘Iron Age history and archaeology in Zambia’, J. Afr. Hist., xv, 1 (1974), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Phillipson, , Later Prehistory, 208, 225.Google Scholar

20 de Maret, P., ‘Sanga: new excavations, more data, and some related problems’, J. Afr. Hist., xviii, 3 (1977), 321–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maret, de, ‘New Survey’, 9.Google Scholar

21 Garlake, P. S., ‘Pastoralism and Zimbabwe’, J. Afr. Hist., XIX, 4 (1978), 479–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer (Oxford, 1940), 16.Google Scholar

23 E.g. Beach, D. N., The Shona and Zimbabwe (London, 1980), 19–20.Google Scholar

24 Maggs, Tim, ‘The Iron Age sequence south of the Vaal and Pongola rivers: some historical implications’, J. Afr. Hist., XXI, 1 (1980), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 This article is based on a paper contributed to the International Symposium on the Languages and History of the Nilotic Peoples, held at the University of Cologne in January 1982.