Plants And People In The African Past

E-Book Overview

There is an essential connection between humans and plants, cultures and environments, and this is especially evident looking at the long history of the African continent. This book, comprising current research in archaeobotany on Africa, elucidates human adaptation and innovation with respect to the exploitation of plant resources. In the long-term perspective climatic changes of the environment as well as human impact have posed constant challenges to the interaction between peoples and the plants growing in different countries and latitudes. This book provides an insight into/overview of the manifold routes people have taken in various parts Africa in order to make a decent living from the provisions of their environment by bringing together the analyses of macroscopic and microscopic plant remains with ethnographic, botanical, geographical and linguistic research. The numerous chapters cover almost all the continent countries, and were prepared by most of the scholars who study African archaeobotany, i.e. the complex and composite history of plant uses and environmental transformations during the Holocene.

E-Book Information

• Year: 2,018

• Edition: 1st ed.

• Pages: VII, 576

• Pages In File: 577

• Language: English

• Identifier: 978-3-319-89838-4,978-3-319-89839-1

• Doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-89839-1

• Org File Size: 120,479,299

• Extension: pdf

• Tags: Life Sciences Life Sciences, general

• Toc: Front Matter ....Pages i-vii Plants and People in the African Past: Themes and Objectives of Archaeobotany (Anna Maria Mercuri, A. Catherine D’Andrea, Rita Fornaciari, Alexa Höhn)....Pages 1-9Front Matter ....Pages 11-11 Archaeobotanical Study at the Early Dynastic Cemetery in Helwan (3100–2600 BC), Egypt: Plant Diversity at Early Dynastic Memphis (Adel Moustafa, Ahmed G. Fahmy, Rim S. Hamdy)....Pages 13-39 Study of Plant Remains from the Embalming Cache KV63 at Luxor, Egypt (Rim Hamdy, Ahmed G. Fahmy)....Pages 40-56 Farming and Trade in Amheida/Trimithis (Dakhla Oasis, Egypt): New Insights from Archaeobotanical Analysis (Valentina Caracuta, Girolamo Fiorentino, Paola Davoli, Roger Bagnall)....Pages 57-75 Archaeobotanical Studies from Hierakonpolis: Evidence for Food Processing During the Predynastic Period in Egypt (Elshafaey A. E. Attia, Elena Marinova, Ahmed G. Fahmy, Masahiro Baba)....Pages 76-89 Grapes, Raisins and Wine? Archaeobotanical Finds from an Egyptian Monastery (Mennat-Allah El Dorry)....Pages 90-99 The Role of Morphometry to Delineate Changes in the Spikelet Shape of Wild Cereals: The Case Study of Takarkori (Holocene, Central Sahara, SW Libya) (Rita Fornaciari, Laura Arru, Rita Terenziani, Anna Maria Mercuri)....Pages 100-122 The Holocene Flora and Vegetation of Ti-n Hanakaten (Tassili n’Ajjer, Algerian Sahara) (Samira Amrani)....Pages 123-145 The Use of Wild Plants in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic of Northwestern Africa: Preliminary Results from the PALEOPLANT Project (Yolanda Carrión Marco, Jacob Morales, Marta Portillo, Guillem Pérez-Jordà, Leonor Peña-Chocarro, Lydia Zapata)....Pages 146-174Front Matter ....P