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

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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

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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

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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

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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