Abstract

Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the southwest and northeast regions. Unraveling the complex prehistory, history, and contemporary political ecology of African pastoralism, results in insight into the ingenuity and flexibility of historical and contemporary herders.

Hans-Peter Wotzka is Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne. His publications include Aridity, Change and Conflict in Africa (with Michael Bollig, Olaf Bubenzer and Ralf Vogelsang, Heinrich-Barth-Institut, 2007) and Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Archaeology of the Fourth Nile Cataract (Heinrich-Barth-Institut, 2012).

Michael Bollig is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. His publications include Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment: A Comparative Study of Two Pastoral Societies (Springer, 2006); The Practice of War: Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence (with A. Rao and M. Böck, Berghahn Books, 2007); and African Landscapes: Interdisciplinary Approaches (with O. Bubenzer, Springer, 2009).

“While the volume will be of interest primarily to African specialists, students of pastoralism also will find it instructive. End-of-chapter reference listings, a compact index, and 100 tables, maps, and photos support the papers.” · Choice

“The book is massive – 525 pages of text including notes and references – and covers pastoral systems across the continent, from the early Holocene in the Eastern Sahara to contemporary pastoralists in North-western Namibia. The breadth and depth of the archaeological and ethnohistorical case studies is impressive and clearly one of the strengths of the volume.” · Nomadic Peoples

“ [The volume’s] coverage is impressive in scope and it should serve as an important reference for those interested in the deep history of African pastoralism and the tremendous extent of its influence today. The volume makes a strong contribution to the archaeological, historical and ethnographic literatures on African pastoralism and coheres as a collection worth far more than the sum of its individual papers. The book is beautifully produced and is highly recommended for scholars of pastoralist systems in Africa, as well as for those elsewhere who might turn to the African case for deeper insight into the successes, failures and futures of pastoralist societies worldwide.”  ·  Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

Michael Schnegg is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. His research aims to understand how people in Sub-Saharan Africa value, use, and govern ecosystem services in an increasingly deterritorialized world.