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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Of Trees and Earth Shrines: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Settlement Histories in the West African Savanna |
| Authors: | Lentz, Carola Sturm, Hans-Jürgen |
| Year: | 2001 |
| Periodical: | History in Africa |
| Volume: | 28 |
| Pages: | 139-168 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Burkina Faso |
| Subjects: | Dagari oral traditions agroforestry history ethnic groups History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172212 |
| Abstract: | The settlement history of south and southwestern Burkina Faso has been shaped by the expansion, over the last two hundred years or more, of Dagara-speaking population groups from the region around Wa, in present-day Ghana, northward. This article examines the methodological problems involved in researching the dynamics of this settlement process. It argues that in a region so strongly shaped by groups of 'winners' and 'losers', oral traditions are bound to be contradictory, and should be supplemented by non-narrative sources, in particular results of vegetation analysis. The article presents models and procedures for analysing 'agricultural parks', understood here as traditional agroforestry systems, from the point of view of vegetation geography. Using the example of the settlement history of Ouessa and Niégo Districts in Burkina Faso, where research was carried out in 1999, the authors describe the findings of vegetation analysis and oral tradition collection respectively, and indicate questions that would have to remain unanswered in a unidisciplinary approach. Finally, they describe the ways in which biogeographical and historical-anthropological data can illuminate, check, diverge from, and correct each other. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
