Search

Africa's fossil record of late Cenozoic mammals documents considerable ecological and evolutionary changes through time. Here, we synthesize those changes in the context of the mechanisms proposed to account for them, including bottom-up (e.g., climate change) and top-down (e.g., hominin impacts) processes. In doing so, we (a) examine how the incompleteness of the fossil record and the varied spatiotemporal scales of the evidence complicate efforts to establish cause-effect relationships; (b) evaluate hypothesized drivers of long-term ecological and evolutionary change, highlighting key unknowns; and (c) synthesize major taxonomic and functional trends through time (e.g., downsizing of faunal communities) considering the proposed drivers. Throughout our review, we point to unresolved questions and highlight research avenues that have potential to inform on the processes that have shaped the history of what are today the most diverse remaining large mammal communities on Earth. The study of late Cenozoic African mammal communities is intertwined with questions about the context, causes, and consequences of hominin evolution. The fossil record documents major functional (e.g., loss of megaherbivores) and taxonomic (e.g., rise of the Bovidae) changes over the past ∼7 Myr. Complexities inherent to the fossil record have made it difficult to identify the processes that drove ecological and evolutionary changes. Unanswered questions about the drivers of faunal change and the functioning of past ecosystems represent promising future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food insecurity affects an estimated 691–783 million people globally and is disproportionately high in Africa and Asia. It arises from poverty, armed conflict, and climate change, among other demographic and globalization forces. This review summarizes evidence for policies and practices across five elements of the agrifood system framework and identifies gaps that inform an agenda for future research. Under availability, imbalanced agriculture policies protect primarily staple food producers, and there is limited evidence on food security impacts for smallholder and women food producers. Evidence supports the use of cash transfers and food aid for affordability and school feeding for multiple benefits. Food-based dietary guidelines can improve the nutritional quality of dietary patterns, yet they may not reflect the latest evidence or food supplies. Evidence from the newer food environment elements, promotion and sustainability, while relatively minimal, provides insight into achieving long-term impacts. To eliminate hunger, our global community should embrace integrated approaches and bring evidence-based policies and practices to scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on issues and topics related to the concept of slavery in the different cultural perspectives. The author decided to write this paper in response to a study of the Western notion of slavery. Anthropologists have contributed some 6 percent of the total bibliographical entries. The rest comes overwhelmingly from history, with economic history a distant second. Overall, the anthropological contribution is narrowly focused on Africa and the Caribbean. Two African collections of papers of the middle nineteen-seventies account for fully a third of the some 75 anthropological entries on African slavery. Anthropology almost completely forgot slavery in the 1920 to 1960 period, when so much of its modem world view was being forged. However, slavery was noted in local contexts through ethnographic monographs rather than in articles which are the main vehicle for theory in American anthropology.

The article presents an anthropological review of the social processes and the themes of conflict and conflict resolutions taken by the Manchester School in South-Central Africa after the World War II. Anthropologist released different papers that tackled the different aspects of the school which included the social field, situational analysis, perpetual succession, intercalary roles, situational selection, cross-cutting ties, the dominant cleavage, redressive ritual, repetitive and changing social systems, processional form, processual change and much of the rhetoric studied has been concerned in disputes and court arguments.

Paleoanthropologists have long speculated about the role of environmental change in shaping human evolution in Africa. In recent years, drill cores of late Neogene lacustrine sedimentary rocks have yielded valuable high-resolution records of climatic and ecosystem change. Eastern African Rift sediments (primarily lake beds) provide an extraordinary range of data in close proximity to important fossil hominin and archaeological sites, allowing critical study of hypotheses that connect environmental history and hominin evolution. We review recent drill-core studies spanning the Plio–Pleistocene boundary (an interval of hominin diversification, including the earliest members of our genus Homo and the oldest stone tools), and the Mid–Upper Pleistocene (spanning the origin of Homo sapiens in Africa and our early technological and dispersal history). Proposed drilling of Africa's oldest lakes promises to extend such records back to the late Miocene. High-resolution paleoenvironmental records are critical for understanding external drivers of human evolution. African lake basin drill cores play a critical role in enhancing hominin paleoenvironmental records given their continuity and proximity to key paleoanthropological sites. The oldest African lakes have the potential to reveal a comprehensive paleoenvironmental context for the entire late Neogene history of hominin evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legume pod borer, Maruca vitrata, has emerged as a major pest on food legumes in Asia and Africa. It is an oligophagous pest, feeding on over 70 species in Fabaceae. We examine the species complex in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, with an emphasis on molecular taxonomy. Studies on pheromone production and perception suggest the existence of pheromone polymorphism, especially in Asia and Africa. No Maruca-resistant varieties are available in the major food legumes including cowpea, pigeonpea, mungbean, and yard-long bean. Legume growers use chemical pesticides indiscriminately, leading to the development of pesticide resistance. However recent developments in habitat management, classical biocontrol with more efficient parasitoids, biopesticides, and judicious use of insecticides pave the way for sustainable management of M. vitrata, which can reduce the pesticide misuse. Active engagement of the private sector and policy makers can increase the adoption of integrated pest management approaches in food legumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The roots of my fascination with politics and Africa run deep; so too does my need for clarity. The combination drove me into the professoriate. My research in Africa convinced me that modernization theory was wrong: The people I came to know in the field were sophisticated in their politics. Additional research convinced me that market-oriented approaches to political economy were wrong and that government intervention could lead to increases in productivity and welfare. Because neoclassical approaches are flexible, I continue to think in terms of strategy and choice and to apply them to the study of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precolonial African polities have emerged in recent years as fertile ground for the comparative archaeological study of social complexity and the state. For much of the twentieth century, precolonial African states were misinterpreted as the product of outside stimuli. Recent archaeological research on such polities, however, has revealed the autochthonous origins of social complexity and the state in Africa, providing valuable new insights for the comparative study of state formation in the past. This review outlines how archaeologists have tackled the precolonial state in Africa, beginning with an outline of colonial-era discourse on the nature of the state and civilization in Africa, followed by a discussion of how archaeological perspectives on power provide insights into political processes across the continent. Key examples are examined within four broadly defined subregions. Throughout this review, I highlight ( a) the agency of indigenous political entrepreneurs in driving state formation across the continent, and ( b) how alternative modes of power shaped the political contours of these precolonial African states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We survey the literature on sub-Saharan Africa to identify how gender has factored into explaining fertility levels and behavior. Tracing the development of male role theory, we argue that despite increasing awareness of men's authority, fertility research continues to focus almost exclusively on women and treats gender as a property of individuals instead of as a system of inequality. The mainstream fertility literature generally overlooks the decision-making nexus wherein men's authority seemingly overrides women's preferences. Positing that male authority in the reproductive and sexual arenas is predicated on cultural rights negotiated at marriage--and undergirded by bridewealth payments--we contend that attempts to understand (and change) reproductive behavior will hardly be sustainable without attention to this contextual realm. In that vein, we speculate that efforts to empower women (via increased education, occupational opportunities, microcredit schemes, etc.) may hardly yield sustainable outcomes without concurrent efforts to alter cultural distributions of gendered power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, simultaneous with a wave of democratization that proved only partially successful, Africa was swept by protracted civil conflicts, which had a number of novel attributes. The Great Lakes region - Congo-Kinshasa, Rwanda, and Burundi - was the epicenter. In their dynamics and demographics, the violent combats became interpenetrated, embroiling the three countries in intractable struggles. Their extraordinary complexity, and multiplicity of state and other actors, interrogated a number of distinct literatures. State decay and collapse, a broader phenomenon in Africa, was especially marked in Congo-Kinshasa. In all three countries, the irresistible pressures for democratization - which were part of a broader African pattern - triggered violent struggles over definitions of identity, citizenship, and indigeneity. The legal, moral, and analytical issue of genocide returned to the research agenda with a vengeance with the Rwandan catastrophe in 1994, and mass ethnic killings in Burundi and Congo-Kinshasa. The new dynamics of African civil wars and warlord politics demanded inquiry. Finally, the necessity of international intervention to contain and mediate the violence brought new attention to peacekeeping issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Africa is various," writes Kwame Anthony Appiah in defiance of the Eurocentric myth of a unitary and unchanging continent. The politics of archaeology in Africa has been no less marked by variety. Yet, underlying this multiplicity of historical experience are a number of common themes and ideas. This review traces the engagement between archaeology and politics in Africa through an exploration of these common themes: first, as a colonial science in the context of European conquest and the subjugation of African people and territories; second, in the context of colonial administration and the growth of settler populations; third, in the context of resistance to colonialism and a developing African nationalism; and fourth, in a postcolonial context, among whose challenges have been the growing illicit trade in antiquities originating in Africa, and (in the past two decades) the decline in direct funding for departments of archaeology in universities and museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review traces accounts of African presence in the former USSR that are available in or have been cited primarily in English; many sources on this topic published in the USSR were strategically intended for Western consumption. This review tracks repetitions of tropes that link certain kinds of "blackness" to "Africa": It observes that treating blacks in the USSR as "displaced" confirmed Soviet humanitarianism, and produced and managed anti-Western/anticapitalist forms of Soviet nationalism and federalism. We scrutinize the ways accounts of African presence use evidence of "race remnants" that implicitly position black bodies as subjects of racial dissolution and/or cultural assimilation. This leads us to question the possibility of narrating African presence in contexts ruled by logics that wed spatial displacement/placement to racial impurity/purity. More broadly, the review addresses the utility of ideals of displaced racial communities within African diasporic criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Iron Age in Africa. The Iron Age in eastern and southem Africa extends over the last 2000 years, and, as a cultural term, designates groups of people who use metals in their agricultural production. Human understanding of the nature of Iron Age societies has broadened through an upsurge in research and improved methods of ordering ceramic and settlement data. In this article, the results of these methods were employed in a review of three long-standing problems, including the Early Iron Age and the spread of Bantu speakers, the postulated transition from an Early to a Late Iron Age, and the origins of the Zimbabwe Culture.

The article focuses on the importance of religious movements in Africa. Such study has brought problems and difficulties on the part of the anthropologists in trying to generate information regarding such movements. Their study includes the review of the Europianization of Africa by the European Christian missionaries as well as the utilization of the typological tools for comparison and discrimination between movements. Furthermore, information on the role of typology as well as of historians in the study of African religion and religious movements have also been sought.

The article discusses the cross-cultural contrasts and convergencies in family, kinship relations, economic organization and moral behavior with reference to African tribes. Several manners have been considered including the aspects of African tribal social life, the problems faced by the author in his research in the field of anthropology, the recognition of siblingship as a factor of kinship structure, the social structure of various tribes in Africa as well as the relation between descent and interpersonal kinship in New Guinea.

The article focuses on the developments in hominid paleontology in Africa. New studies on the morphology of many specimens with a concomitant better appreciation of the total morphological pattern and of the ranges of variation within populations. The time scale of hominid evolution in East Africa is becoming progressively clearer with new age determinations based upon the potassium-argon method. It is becoming possible to formulate rentative synoptic models of the chronological and phylogenetic relationships between the South and East African fossil hominids and a single pattern of African hominid phylogeny.

The author shares his experiences during his archaeological training and research in Africa. He first worked in Africa on January 6, 1938 in Livingstone, Zambia that was then known as Northern Rhodesia. During his 56 years of fieldwork in Africa, he had seen how archaeology and the study of African prehistory have developed since the early days before the world war II. Moreover, the author also mention that his work in parts of Asia such as Syria, India and China allowed him to make a more balance assessment of Africa's contribution to the historical record.

The article discusses the Western awareness of the cultural dimensions of African metallurgy. Metals played prominent roles in African history and prehistory. Indigenous African metallurgy assumed not only economic significance but also included social organization and hierarchy. African metals assumed social roles, whether as dowry, burial offering, political decoration, taxes, gifts, alliance symbols, territorial conquests, tribute, or agricultural tool. They also symbolize rites of passage such as legitimizing assumption of positions of authority.

The article traces the origins and development of African pastoralism. The origins and spread of herding societies in the continent is no longer in dispute. Studies have found out that pastoralism started out in Central Sahara and headed southwestward of the present Sahel. In East Africa, pastoralism started from Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Contact between the agro pastoralists and the aboriginal hunting people of Southern Africa further spread pastoralism into the rest of Southern Africa. The ecological model of adaptation to the grassland environments is described.

The article examines studies by anthropologists and other researchers on the causes of famines and food shortages south of the Sahara in Africa. It focuses on three questions: who suffers, what do they do about it and what becomes of society in the process. The gap between anthropology and economics is also analyzed. The studies examined include summaries of migrations, resettlements, agrarian ecology, anthropologists' work in development, bioanthropology, disaster sociology, famine geography, farming systems research, resource conservation and political economy.

The article presents a study on paleoanthropology as a multidisciplinary science in the context of Africa. Apart from human paleontology, paleoanthropology encompasses also social science, prehistoric archeology, behavioral science, palynology, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, taphonomy, comparative and functional morphology, biomechanics, systematics, evolutionary theory and molecular biology. The author sighted works about the similarity of chimpanzees and gorillas to humans. He assumed that humankind emerged from apehood in Africa. He also reacted to a possibility of new era of taxonomic splitting and on the "black skull". After overviewing the history of paleoanthropology, he is considering that the first of them was a southern African instead of an Englishman.

The article presents a study on discovery, distribution, variation and morphological description of Homo erectus and their distinction to other humans. After comparing the anatomy, behavior and morphology of Homo erectus and other hominids, the author argues that Homo erectus can be defined as the real paleospecies rather than an arbitrary grade or stage in the evolution of human. He commented on Weidenreich's assumption that Homo erectus gradually changed ending with the appearance of a modern Homo sapiens. He presented evidences showing that there is no clear links in Southeast Asia between Homo erectus and recent humans. He suggested intensive study to newer fossils in China or to look forward to Europe or Africa to find ties to Homo erectus to later species.