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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:A New Paradigm: The Early Iron Age without Bantu Migrations
Authors:Robertson, John H.
Bradley, Rebecca
Year:2000
Periodical:History in Africa
Volume:27
Pages:287-323
Language:English
Geographic term:Subsaharan Africa
Subjects:Bantu-speaking peoples
migration
prehistory
History and Exploration
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Anthropology and Archaeology
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172118
Abstract:Between 1000 BC and AD 1000, or so the story goes, sub-Saharan Africa was the setting for one of the all-time great population movements of antiquity - the Bantu migrations. Sweeping to and fro across the continent, absorbing or brushing aside the autochthonous hunter-gatherers, the ancestral Bantu speakers carried with them on their march the seeds of a settled life fuelled by food production and iron technology. This paper examines some of the serious methodological and practical problems that bedevil the migrationary model. It also presents an alternative model for the prehistory of sub-Saharan Africa: that the development of the Early Iron Age in Africa (c. 200 BC to AD 1000) was a process rather than an event; that autochthonous populations gradually adopted the suite of traits that define the Early Iron Age, without any large-scale movement of peoples; and that increasing sedentarization actually led to a population decline which was only overcome after AD 500. The new paradigm holds that large migrations in sub-Saharan Africa occurred only during the 400 years leading up to the 20th century. The paradigm also holds that the African continent can only be understood on its own terms, and only if the theoretical residue from colonial times can be filtered out. Bibliogr.
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