Catalogue – JAA Monograph Series

Summary: Studies of food and foodways are vital to exploring past (and present) cultures. The food remains discovered at the port of Quseir al-Qadim are especially revealing, offering important information about the ancient spice trade and the food practices of those engaged in this trade. Quseir al-Qadim acted as a transhipment port in the Indian Ocean spice trade during both the Roman and medieval Islamic periods. It is located on the Red Sea coast of Egypt and was active between ca. AD 1-250 (Myos Hormos) and again during ca. AD 1050-1500 (Kusayr). This monograph describes the analysis and interpretation of the botanical remains (foodstuffs, wood) recovered during the excavations that took place between 1999-2003, conducted by the University of Southampton, UK. The spectacular preservation conditions at Quseir al-Qadim meant that food remains and wood were found in abundance, including fragments of onion skin, citrus rind, garlic cloves, aubergine seeds, banana skins, wooden bowls, spoons and combs, as well as many of the Eastern spices traded through the port, such as black pepper, ginger, cardamom and betelnut. These remains are fully analysed and discussed under three overarching themes: trade, agricultural innovation and food consumption. The results provide significant new evidence for the Eastern trade and for the changes in agriculture that indirectly resulted from it. They also allow real insights into the lives of those working in the ports. They show the changes in the nature and scale of the Indian Ocean trade between the Roman and Islamic periods, as well as a major shift in the way the inhabitants of the ports saw themselves and located themselves in the wider world. Richly illustrated and thought-provoking, this volume identifies how studies of food enable fuller dialogues regarding ‘globalization’ and also highlights clearly the importance of food in the dynamics of cultural identity and geopolitics.
 

Author: Marijke van der Veen is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester. Her research focuses on ancient agriculture and the archaeology of food, with a specialization in archaeobotany. Current research projects include a reconstruction of foodways and the development of horticulture in north-west Europe. She is author of Crop Husbandry Regimes (1992), and editor of The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa (1999), Luxury Foods (2003), Garden Agriculture (2005) and Agricultural Innovation (2010), the latter three issues of the journal World Archaeology.

Summary: Les resultats de la fouille archeologique de la plus longue tranchee jamais creusee en Afrique sont presentes dans ce livre. Depuis les forets du littoral au sud du Cameroun jusqu’aux savanes seches du Tchad meridional, la construction du pipeline souterrain du A” Chad Export Project A” a permis a une equipe de recherche internationale d’investiguer un transept d’une longueur de 1070 Km (!). Le A” Kome-Kribi Project A” constitue une application exemplaire de l’archeologie de prevention et de sauvetage, associant une serie d’institutions politiques et commerciales. Un total impressionnant de 472 sites datant du Middle Stone Age a l’Age du Fer, dont de nombreux sites de premiere importance, ont ete decouvert dans des regions jusqu’alors quasi inconnues sur le plan archeologique. L’ouvrage comprend la description des sites et du materiel qui y a ete decouvert, un apercu general de la chronologie basee sur une soixantaine de dates C14 et l’analyse des nouvelles decouvertes en regard des donnees existantes dans une perspective synoptique de l’histoire culturelle de l’Afrique centrale. Il fournit une base substantielle pour les etudes futures et offre egalement une introduction a la prehistoire de la region pour les archeologues moins au fait de l’histoire de cette partie du continent. Finalement, les auteurs nous offrent un apercu de l’extraordinaire abondance, a peine effleuree jusqu’a present, des richesses archeologiques du sol africain.

Summary: This book presents the first preview of discoveries made in the longest archaeological trench ever dug in Africa. From the forests of coastal south Cameroon towards the dry savannas in southern Chad, the construction of the underground pipeline of the Chad Export Project enabled an international research team to investigate a transect of 1070 kilometers (!) length. The Kome-Kribi project demonstrates the exemplary application of rescue or preventive archaeology and of cultural heritage management with regard to a variety of involved political and commercial institutions. In areas previously almost unknown archaeologically an impressive number of 472 new sites from the Middle Stone Age to the Iron Age, many considered to be important, were located. Their description, including quantities of cultural materials, a chronological outline based on about sixty radiocarbon dates, and the integration of the new and known evidence in a synoptic consideration of the cultural development of Central Africa, provides a substantial base for further studies and, for those archaeologists less familiar with the region, also offers an introduction into the local prehistory. Finally, the authors have given us a vision on the abundance of information about Africa’s past that is still preserved in the ground and scarcely touched, so far.

Summary: Si les Dogon ont fait l’objet d’etudes bien documentees et publiees, les forgerons associes aux Dogon n’avaient fait jusqu’a ce jour l’objet d’aucune etude specifique. Cet ouvrage concerne la production traditionnelle du fer en pays dogon durant la periode comprise entre les derniers grands empires precoloniaux, au milieu du deuxieme millenaire de notre ere, et l’installation de la colonie francaise, au tournant des 19e et 20e siecles. Il vise a preciser l’identite des forgerons attaches aux Dogon et leur role, tant social que technique, de definir des traditions siderurgiques et de cerner l’evolution de la production du fer dans la region. Grace a une recherche tant actualiste que diachronique, et a la fois locale et extensive, qui associe diverses approches complementaires telles que les analyses des sources ecrites, les enquetes de tradition orale, les prospections et fouilles archeologiques ou les observations paleometallurgiques, Caroline Robion-Brunner a elabore un scenario global de l’histoire du peuplement des forgerons du pays dogon et de leur production, qu’elle replace dans la dynamique du plateau central nigerien.

Summary: This volume contains the proceedings of the international conference “Cultural developments and technological innovations in first millennium BC/AD West Africa” held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in March 2008, with participants from eleven countries and three continents. The rationale behind the meeting was the conviction that the first millennium before and after the beginning of the Common Era, like no other period before, encompasses the origins of developments that are directly related to the modern world – particularly in Africa. Current archaeological research in West Africa has been providing an increasing amount of relevant evidence on this period, including a series of significant developments that had critical impacts on human ways of life in subsequent times. The papers of the present volume deal with different aspects of these developments and contribute towards the understanding of the unique cultural diversity of this part of the African continent.

Summary: In this volume, Karl Peter Wendt presents the first comprehensive results of a series of archaeological excavations carried out at sites of the earliest food-producing communities known in the Chad Basin of Northeast Nigeria: the so-called Gajiganna Culture. He describes the background of research, sheds light on the information contained in the stratigraphies of the sites examined, and offers exhaustive and advanced statistical analysis on technological, temporal, typological and ornamental aspects of the pottery recovered in course of research. After considering the ceramic sequence in its absolute chronological framework, the author makes an attempt to detect possible cultural relations between the Gajiganna sites and other archaeological locations both within and outside the Chad Basin. The volume is complemented by a photographic documentation of the Gajiganna pottery assemblages.