SFB 268
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Nous nous intéresserons à la question de l'utilisation qui est faite des langues nationales, notamment dans le système éducatif. C'est un fait connu en effet que la langue officielle du Burkina est le français et que tout l'enseignement formel, du premier jour à l'école jusqu'au dernier jour à l'université en passant par le secondaire se fait exclusivement en français (comme d'ailleurs dans beaucoup d'autres pays dits "francophones"). Il s'en suit que la langue française est très valorisée et valorisante, étant la langue du peu d'élus qui sont allés à l'école, la langue des fonctionnaires de l'État et de la classe dirigeante, la langue de l'administration, de la justice, la langue de communication internationale. Se pose alors la question de savoir ce qu'on fait des langues du pays, pour lesquelles on utilise le terme de "langues nationales".
Maiduguri, an important city in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of West Africa, experiences both drought and floods. Although droughts are more popular, floods are a seasonal occurrence in parts of the city in the average rainy season. Both hazards exert a heavy toll on their victims. Present response to the hazard problems is characterised by a fire-fighting approach which does little about future occurrence. Much of the perception and response is spiritual and stops short of needed structural and organisational programmes for effective mitigation of hazards. Future occurrences of drought and flood may have more adverse effects as land use in the city becomes more complex and agricultural and water supply system comes to depend heavily on surfacial sources. Future effects will also depend on the socio-economic conditions of the people at risk and the capacity of those who help them. Governments and people need to work together to reduce drought and flood hazards.
In Nigeria terrace agriculture can mainly be found in the so called "Middle Belt Economy" as FORDE (1946)1 coined this type which lies between the grain economy of males in the north and tuber cultivation of females in the south. The people - lacking a hierarchically social and territorial organisation - are called acephalous or segmentary societies. From the geographical point of view the Middle Belt is seen as a zone of transition. Because of the variability of the climate (sometimes it is too wet for grains, sometimes too dry for tubers) a strategy of mixed cropping enables the farmers to overcome these hazards. Their strategy can be seen in the frame of the game theory. A low population density and a lack of sufficient accessibility limited the innovation of cash crops at that time. The papers on the Tangale-Waja Region will reveal manifold facets of the culture and agriculture. In a first step we learn by the research of J. Heinrich that the natural environment is - from the genetic point of view - a prerequisite for the establishing of terraces, but it is still today an important provision to the modern farmers in their resettlement areas.
We can conclude that the Dughwede calendar lasts for two seasonal years, marked by the bull festival as a culminating and turning point. All ritual and agricultural activities are interlinked and need to be seen comprehensively together with the social and cosmological order to understand the underlying cultural pattern. The year is dramatized throughout the seasons to keep the communication between the natural and spiritual forces, both creatively reflected in the individual person. The traditional world was kept in balance as a functional equilibrium over a period of time not known to us, but is now moving towards a process of transformation initiated by structural historical change. The first step towards change is the change of moral values which affects possibly first individuals and then groups. This encourages them to give up the traditional way of interacting with their environment. This process can be described as secularisation and leads to another quality of relationship between man and his natural environment. The same process can also be described as socio-economic change.
The architecture and chemistry of a dug-out: the Dufuna Canoe in ethno-archaeological perspective
(1996)
It is the intention of this paper to highlight the processes involved in the production of a dug-out. Two disciplines appear strikingly clear in the title of this paper; architecture and chemistry. It is deliberate, exhibiting the multifaceted approach to issues in archaeology. The Dufuna canoe, the main subject of the discussion, is entirely an organic material, long used by prehistoric populations, abandoned and covered in a huge deposit of earth, unearthed by the spade in two streams of excavations for the purpose of dating, measurements, documentation, which yielded a date of 8500 years as the oldest canoe in Africa and one of the oldest in the world. Who could have produced such an "artefact"? These and other related questions are fundamental towards the understanding of the history and society that lived in that environment in prehistory. Since we are dealing with a single "artefact" produced by prehistoric populations, long gone and extinct, we would not be in a position to reconstruct the processes of manufacture of the dug-out by any source other than by ethno-archaeological and ethnographic investigation and experiment of the contemporary society which manipulates similar environment with a view to stimulating the past mode of production. The method used in the data collection was by oral interviews and field observation.
The Yobe valley is one of the many refugia that dotted the Chad basin after the commencement of the desiccation of the Sahara. It hypothetically must have been attractive to the population that had to move away from the aridized zone in search of favourable ecotones. As the Mega Chad receded from its Bama ridge shores, new lands were progressively made available for human occupation along the valley. It is one of the principal goals of the Yobe Valley Archaeological project to investigate how and when this new valley was occupied. This paper has been divided into three principal sections. The first section deals with the search for the earliest settlements of the Yobe valley. The excavations conducted at Garingada and Damakarwa were aimed at tackling this problem. The second section deals with the development of complexity. The excavation at Gambaru was directed towards this problem. The third section seeks to discuss on the bases of the excavations at the three sites, manenvironment relationship. The concluding part of the paper focuses attention on the problems and prospects of the Yobe Valley Archaeological Project.
Les concessions chez les Bisa, dans la Province du Boulgou (sud-est du Burkina Faso), sont des exemples représentatifs de l’architecture traditionnelle soudanienne: un rassemblement de cases rondes de glaise d’un diamètre d’environ 3 mètres, couvert d’un toit de paille. Les concessions sont entourées par un mur de glaise et on ne peut y entrer ou en sortir que par une seule entrée. On ne découvre leur complexité que seulement après y être entré. C’est seulement à ce moment-là que l’on peut voir le dédale de cases et de cours, séparés par de petits murs et des couloirs. La concession du chef de Bangagou, chez qui nous avons habité durant l’automne 1994 pendant quelques mois, compte parmi les plus grandes de la région. Pendant les premières semaines de notre séjour, il nous a fallu comprendre son histoire et sa structure. Notre premier objectif était de dessiner un plan de la concession. Ce projet s’est révélé plus difficile que prévu. Le terrain étant si plat, nous n’avons pu voir la concession d’en haut. L’achèvement de ce plan n’a été possible que parce que les habitants nous ont donné libre-accès à ces lieux. La vérification de l’esquisse fut possible en décembre, lorsque nous avons eu la chance de faire un vol au-dessus du terrain et de prendre des photos aériennes. Parallèlement, nous avons mené une enquête auprès des habitants afin de connaître leurs relations avec les habitants des autres cases, selon leurs descriptions.
Two sites situated in the Sahelian and Sudanian zones of NE-Nigeria were chosen for pollen analysis. A sediment core from an interdunal depression in the eastern Manga Grassland provides information on the Holocene vegetation history of the Sahel between c. 9600-3400 B.P. The 3 m pollen record indicates an open savanna during the mid-Holocene. The presence of Sudano-Guinean taxa, which were mainly restricted to the interdunal depressions, points to more humid conditions. Already before c. 4000 B.P., a slow change towards drier conditions and the establishment of the modern Sahelian vegetation is visible in the diagram. This development was accompanied by high fire frequencies. A 16 m core from a crater lake (Lake Tilla) in the Sudanian zone of NE-Nigeria provides a pollen record which can be dated back to approximately 11-12000 B.P. Preliminary pollen spectra show a relatively constant pattern with a dominance of grass pollen even during the middle Holocene.
Au Sahel du Burkina Faso, le diagramme pollinique d'Oursi fournit des évidences sur l'apparition de l'agriculture, il y a environ 3000 ans. A partir de ces faits, le but principal des recherches archéologiques dans le cadre du SFB 268 était de trouver et de fouiller des sites qui seraient à même d'apporter des informations sur cette période décisive autour de 3000 ans avant l'actuel. Pour cela, nous avons concentré notre travail sur les provinces du Séno et plus particulièrement de l'Oudalan. Le paysage de cette région est marqué par des dunes qui s'organisent grossièrement en cordons d'orientation nord-est/sud-ouest à travers notre terrain.
In a previous study which originally tackled the apparent contradiction between oral tradition and linguistic evidence in the Babur-Bura case, we approached the issue through a contrastive analysis of Bura and Kanuri. Since the originstory tends to push the Babur towards the Kanuri, leaving the Bura to stand all alone, it was felt that any linguistic closeness between Kanuri and Babur would confirm the originstory. Unfortunately, the paper did not come up with such evidence. The paper in question summarizes COHEN's (1983) account and interpretation of both the Babur and the Bura versions of their origin. It then presents the loopholes in the various accounts, based not only on the current linguistic classification of the area, but also on the results of an investigation carried out within the framework of the "Borno Surname Project". At both the phonological and syntactic levels, BADEJO (1989) observes that in view of certain fundamental differences between Kanuri on the one hand and Babur-Bura on the other, Babur affiliation with Kanuri is doubtful. Such differences include: the lack of voice distinction between the labiodental fricatives in Kanuri (i.e. /f/ and /v/; the /p/ - /f/ alternation), especially in wordinitial position in Kanuri, and finally, the SOV structure of the Kanuri sentence. The paper, drawing on support from an opinion survey, therefore concludes that "general linguistic and the social linguistic considerations presented ... seem to point to the fact that the Babur and the Bura are, by and large, the same people". The paper, however, recognizes the need for a Babur-Bura contrastive study. The current paper is the first step in that direction.