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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Maasai Farmers: The Evolution of Arusha Agriculture |
Authors: | Spear, Thomas T. Nurse, Derek |
Year: | 1992 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
Volume: | 25 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 481-503 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Tanzania |
Subjects: | Arusha agricultural history Maasai language Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/219022 |
Abstract: | While people commonly associate the Maasai of East Africa exclusively with pastoralism, more than one-third of all East African Maa-speakers farm. The Arusha Maasai, living on the southwestern slopes of Mount Meru in Tanzania, are intensive irrigation farmers who value land and the abundant crops the fertile volcanic soils produce as well as cattle. They often appear more similar to Bantu-speaking Meru farmers who live on the southeastern slopes of the mountain than they do to Kisongo Maasai pastoralists who inhabit the surrounding plains. But as Maa-speakers, Arusha trace their origins from Maasai and continue to participate actively in Maasai age-sets and rituals. The historical evidence for close, enduring Arusha relations with pastoral Maasai, as contrasted with their more distant and ineffectual relations with Chaga and Meru, is borne out by linguistic evidence relating to interaction among the four peoples. Meru linguistic influence on Arusha, and vice versa, is remarkably slight, given the close proximity of the two peoples on Mount Meru over the past 150 years. There is, however, a notable exception to the general lack of influence by either language on the other concerning vocabulary associated with cultivation, where most Arusha items for agricultural crops, tools, and practices are borrowed, largely from Meru. Notes, ref. |