Abstract and Keywords
During the last 10,000 years, cultivation and herding have supplanted hunting and gathering as economic strategies almost everywhere. Africa’s sequence of economic change differs from that of most continents in that herding tended to precede crop farming, and domestication of indigenous plants occurred fairly late — during the last 5,000 years. Different innovations in subsistence strategies took place in different parts of Africa: some regions saw animal domestication and the spread of herding, others the domestication of seed crops or the cultivation of perennial plants propagated vegetatively. This article examines the archaeological evidence for these processes in Africa. It also shows how the domestication of various indigenous African crops led to the development of a wide array of agricultural economies within Africa and, eventually, how those economies gave new resources and tastes to other regions of the world.
Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of titles within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view restricted versions of this content, plus any full text content that is freely available.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .