Berichte des Sonderforschungsbereichs 268
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04, 111
Tenkodogo, a township situated in the south-eastern part of Burkina Faso on the road leading from the capital Ouagadougou to the Togo border, has approximately 29,000 inhabitants. It is Burkina's seventh largest town and is the location of the regional government of the Boulgou-Province. This regional government is represented by a high-commissioner and a "préfet" as it is the residence of a traditional ruler, otherwise known as Tenkodogo-naaba. His sphere of influence covers many villages and hamlets in the region: in total he is the sovereign of nearly 120,000 people. The power of the traditional rulers was curtailed first by the arrival and following overrule of the French colonialists and then after independence by Sankara and his revolutionary government. The kings ceased to be the ultimate judges who were able to determine life and death of their subjects. Henceforth they were no longer allowed to recruit subjects for certain work on their fields, and they no longer could claim control over the allocation of resources. Their position was strengthened anew by Sankara's successor in office, Blaise Campaore, who quickly recognized that collaborating with the traditional rulers could only be of advantage: in fact they later proved to be his best supporters in the election campaign.
04, 131
All over the world meat plays an important role in the nutrition of people. Mostly it is considered to be a special source of strength and health. In many peoples' minds the consumption of animal products, such as muscle, fat, blood, inner organs and bones, is much more associated with vital strength than a vegetarian meal. A reason for this may be the inherent physical similarity between human being and animal, especially mammals. There are other ways of producing meat, such as hunting and fishing, but today the most common method is butchering. The people in Tenkodogo consider beef to be an excellent meat. We will focus our comparative studies on special occasions, specialised butchers, locations, times, technical methods, distribution and ideas connected with the production and consumption of beef. Two fundamental reasons for the butchering of cattle can be identified: firstly, bulls are killed during the rituals of the year and secondly, cattle is slaughtered for daily commercial purposes on the market. In both cases almost the entire carcass of the butchered animal is consumed by people. In Tenkodogo we can actually compare those two different reasons, which have at least one common impact.
04, 005
In a recent article dealing with the Tangale Peak or Kilang, as it is called in the local Tangale language, Herrmann JUNGRAITHMAYR presents an account narrated by a Tangale elder about the attempted ascent of that characteristic mountain by a British colonial officer and his subsequent death.1 Kilang mountain is a basaltic cone approximately 1300 m high, about 8 km southwest of Kaltungo, one of the principal settlements of the Tangale people, in southern Bauchi State, northeastern Nigeria. During a research stay at the National Archives in Kaduna in November 1993 I was able to consult a file containing various documents relating to this incident in detail.2 In the following note I present an outline of the events based on the evidence in the colonial records. By doing this I not only intend to shed more light on a tragic event from the very early years of the colonial era. The picture of the circumstances emerging from the investigations of the colonial authorities may serve as a background to the narrative by the Tangale elder presented in JUNGRAITHMAYR's publication.
08, 321
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.
08, 215
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.
08, 101
The paper presents a short introduction to the environmental factors, e.g. climate, geology, relief forms and soils of the study area in the southern parts of the Gongola Basin. The study area covers the high mountain range of the Tangale-Waja Uplands and the adjacent pediplain, following in the north. It is asked if the natural factors enforced former inhabitants of the area to develop special land use techniques like field terracing to ensure the essential crop production under insufficient geoecological conditions.
08, 125
In the culture of the Pero, Longuda and Tula People in the south-eastern part of Bauchi State, north-eastern Nigeria, terraces are found as traditional means to improve the environmental condition and to secure the survival of the people. To classify those terraces according to their form and function, the techniques and customs of their building and the traditional structures of their development they have to be compared in the context of their own culture. The paper gives a few examples showing that the importance of terraces for the historic and religious concepts of the Pero, Longuda and Tula People is expressed through a tight network of oral traditions, social and religious customs and structures of belief and explanation, which, once they were woven together, eventually build what a malam from Tula called a glue of inheritance, identity, integrity, continuity and security.
08, 077
Our dichotomy of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ is expressed in the Kanuri language with the terms al@ga for ‘creation’ and ‘creature’ which embraces trees, mammals, birds, insects, humans, in short the whole of the natural environment, and ada for ‘custom, habit, way of behaviour, family tradition’ for culture as a whole. There is no genre of oral literature, which would describe al@ga as such, but aspects of it can always be expressed in proverbs, riddles, toponymic praise phrases and songs, of which those performed by the hunters figure most prominently in reflecting upon al@ga. Yet, in these songs (and partly in other genres) ideas about al@ga are not purely descriptive in naturalists’ terms. They are much rather expressions, which centrally combine notions of the social and natural environment.
08, 093
The vast distribution of terraces in the geographical Sudan zone of West Africa leads to the question why and under which conditions an agrarian society might apply this particular form of farming. From an anthropologist's point of view it is essential to understand why farmers practise this form of farming and therefore try to explain the reason for it. The best way to gain insight is the description of terrace farming and when taking a closer look, we realize that farming is nowhere only an isolated agricultural activity.
08, 193
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.