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CORDIS

Using microbotanical remains and modelling to trace migrations of Bantu and pre-Bantu Expansions in Central Africa

Projektbeschreibung

Erkenntnisse zur Modellierung der Verbreitung der Bantuvölker

Die ursprünglich aus Kamerun stammenden Bantu spielten eine entscheidende Rolle bei der Verbreitung landwirtschaftlicher Praktiken in ganz Zentralafrika. Pflanzenreste offenbaren, dass sie Baumkulturen wie Ölpalmen und Canarium und Savannenpflanzen wie Kuhbohnen, Perlhirse und Sorghum anbauten sowie Hühner und Rinder hielten. Ungeachtet dieser frühen Landbaupraktiken gehen die heute in Zentralafrika vorherrschenden Lebensmittel auf südostasiatische Waldpflanzen wie Bananen, Zuckerrohr, Yamswurzel und Taro zurück. Das EU-finanzierte Projekt BantuAdapts wird die historische Wirtschaft der Zentralafrikanischen Republik und Ugandas untersuchen. Anhand der Analyse von Sedimenten aus archäologischen Stätten entlang der Wanderungsrouten wird das Projekt die prähistorischen Subsistenzpraktiken mithilfe der Untersuchung von pflanzlichen Mikroresten aufklären.

Ziel

The Bantu Expansion was a transformative human migration identified with linguistics that spread farming over much of Africa. There are competing theories to explain how Bantu people spread agriculture from their origin in Cameroun across one of the largest continental masses on Earth into regions inhospitable for farming, such as the Congolian forests and the Zambezian savannahs. Bantu people are thought to have adopted agriculture in the Sahel before undertaking a series of migrations through forest or savannah corridors, east of the Atlantic coastal forest and possibly along the coast, gradually bringing a stock-raising and crops to the entirety of Central Africa. Plant remains show the use of arboriculture (oil palm, Canarium), and savannah crops (cowpea and pearl millet), while later migrations incorporated sorghum, chicken, and cattle. However, forest crops such as banana, sugarcane, yams and taro (that came from southeast Asia) are the dominant foods in Central Africa today. However, it is unknown if these crops powered the Bantu Expansion. Africa was a heterogeneous landscape of forager-farmer-pastoralists interactions and some Bantu adaptations to the humid environments might be from pre-Bantu agriculturists, for example, use of southeast Asian crops. This project will investigate the prehistoric economy in two poorly explored areas of Central Africa, through reconstructing subsistence with plant microremains (phytoliths and starch) using sediment from archaeological sites along the envisaged migration routes in Central African Republic and Uganda. The resulting data will be combined with archaeological data, demographic parameters and geography to model these expansions and test hypothesised routes against linguistically inferred routes in savannah corridors and forest. These results will provide the first reconstruction of the early food producer economy, while modelling will assess the pathways of this transformative event.

Finanzierungsplan

MSCA-PF - MSCA-PF

Koordinator

UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA
Netto-EU-Beitrag
€ 181 152,96
Adresse
PLACA DE LA MERCE, 10-12
08002 Barcelona
Spanien

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Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Aktivitätstyp
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Gesamtkosten
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