Besieged Palaeonegritics or Innovative Farmers: Historical Political Ecology of Intensive and Terraced Agriculture in West Africa and Sudan

Widgren, Mats

doi:10.1080/00020184.2010.499204

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(25 reference statements)

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“…The construction of terraced field systems occurs in several locations in Africa (Grove and Sutton 1989;Lang and Stump 2017;Stump 2010;Widgren 2000Widgren , 2010, but within our area and period of interest (western Africa up to AD 1500) this system appears to be limited to the Mandara Mountains of northern Cameroon. Other terraced regions of western Africa, such as the Kofyar in Nigeria (Netting 1993), were likely terraced some time after our study period, and several of these are documented by AD 1800 (Widgren 2018).…”

Section: Terrace Farmingmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…bananas) whenever they became available in the region. It also implies more complex field-management techniques, such as regular fallow systems (Höhn and Neumann 2012), infield/outfield systems (Widgren 2010), or the creation of 'dark earths' (Fairhead and Leach 2009;Fairhead, Leach and Kojo 2012). These groups would also keep domestic stock and supplement their diet with foraged wild resources.…”

Section: Diversified Farmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5) and the likely expansion of the agricultural terrace systems in the region (MacEachern 2012a, b;MacEachern, Djoussou and Janson 2010). This type of terraced-farming system grew in importance and appeared in other areas of the continent in the following centuries (Grove and Sutton 1989;Stump 2010;Widgren 2000Widgren , 2010, and is still an important feature of the Mandara landscape today.…”

Section: Ad 1500mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diversification, Intensification and Specialization: Changing Land Use in Western Africa from 1800 BC to AD 1500

et al. 2019

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Many societal and environmental changes occurred between the 2nd millennium BC and the middle of the 2nd millennium AD in western Africa. Key amongst these were changes in land use due to the spread and development of agricultural strategies, which may have had widespread consequences for the climate, hydrology, biodiversity, and ecosystem services of the region. Quantification of these land-use influences and potential feedbacks between human and natural systems is controversial, however, in part because the archaeological and historical record is highly fragmented in time and space. To improve our understanding of how humans contributed to the development of African landscapes, we developed an atlas of landuse practices in western Africa for nine time-windows over the period 1800 BC-AD 1500. The maps are based on a broad synthesis of archaeological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological, historical, linguistic, genetic, and ethnographic data, and present land use in 12 basic categories. The main differences between categories is the relative reliance on, and variety of, domesticated plant and animal species utilized, and the energy invested in cultivating or keeping them. The maps highlight the irregular and frequently non-linear trajectory of land-use change in the prehistory of western Africa. Representing an original attempt to produce rigorous spatial synthesis from diverse sources, the atlas will be useful for a range of studies of human-environment interactions in the past, and highlight major spatial and temporal gaps in data that may guide future field studies.

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Section: Terrace Farmingmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Diversified Farmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ad 1500mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diversification, Intensification and Specialization: Changing Land Use in Western Africa from 1800 BC to AD 1500

et al. 2019

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“…The predatory, hierarchical states, based mainly on the plains, which took part in the slave-raiding and used slave labour in their own agriculture, also intensified their agriculture, primarily by investing in anthropogenic soils and in wells for irrigation (Widgren 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Slaves: inequality and sustainable agriculture in pre- colonial West Africa

Widgren¹

2013

Ecology and Power

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“…Many political ecologists have remained committed to the study of past and present as well as the past-in-present, whereas others have opted to deploy shorter temporal or cross-sectional horizons in analyzing the causes and outcomes of environmental conflicts. While political ecology can thus be argued to have always had a historical component, some scholars have emphasized its historical dimensions and have felt a need to promote an explicit sub-field of historical political ecology (Carney 2001, Offen 2004, Biehler 2009, Carney and Rosomoff 2009, Davis 2009, Peluso 2009, Widgren 2010, Hecht 2013.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using historical political ecology to understand the present: water, reeds, and biodiversity in the Camargue Biosphere Reserve, southern France

Mathevet¹,

Peluso²,

Couespel³

et al. 2015

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Exploring both ecological and political-economic histories sheds light on the long-term effects of social and environmental changes. Wetlands provide an excellent context for examining the re-working of society-nature relations in a landscape over a long duration. Wetland conditions and social-ecological dynamics show changes rapidly and visibly because they are frequently re-engineered to account for changes in both technology and social preferences. Wetlands are subject to multiple, concurrent property and access regimes that have consequences for both management and ecosystem health. We discuss the social-natural history of the Scamandre Marshes in the western part of the Camargue Biosphere Reserve using a historical political ecology approach to analyze the shifting dynamics between power relations under a variety of political-economic arrangements, and the ecology of the marsh environment. The approach highlights how historical political ecology is a means of identifying historical socio-natures and how European or national conservation actors' constructions of a place as "natural" affect its use, conservation, and management. We show that contemporary ecological dynamics are best explained by past conflicts related to property claims, access to natural resources, and their effects on the flows and composition of water in the marsh. A general model of wetland transformation stresses repeated cycles of stability and upheaval, emphasizing that the lack of historical analysis threatens both wetlands and conflict resolution. No landscape is produced locally or ahistorically. We emphasize here that history is not only a hallmark of political ecology, but a way of understanding ecological changes that can help advance biodiversity conservation science and policy.

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Besieged Palaeonegritics or Innovative Farmers: Historical Political Ecology of Intensive and Terraced Agriculture in West Africa and Sudan

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 13 publications

References 42 publications

Diversification, Intensification and Specialization: Changing Land Use in Western Africa from 1800 BC to AD 1500

Diversification, Intensification and Specialization: Changing Land Use in Western Africa from 1800 BC to AD 1500

Slaves: inequality and sustainable agriculture in pre- colonial West Africa

Using historical political ecology to understand the present: water, reeds, and biodiversity in the Camargue Biosphere Reserve, southern France

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