The Problem of the Bantu Expansion
- Articleauthorquery
- oliverr[Google Scholar]
Roland Oliver
This paper outlines four stages of the Bantu expansion: first, the initial push through the equatorial forest from the northern to the southern woodlands; second, the occupation of the southern woodland belt from coast to coast; third, the colonization of the Tanzania, Kenya and southern Somali coastline and of the northern sector of the lake region; fourth, the colonization south-wards, north-westwards and north-eastwards from this extended nucleus. The evidence for the first stage is largely linguistic and is likely to remain so. The outlines of the fourth stage can be established very largely from traditional evidence. It is for chronological data concerning the second and third stages that we can now turn hopefully to archaeology. In both these stages the Bantu expansion seems to have coincided fairly closely with the spread of the Iron Age; and, if the spread of the Iron Age through the area north of the southern woodlands can now be traced in something like the detail which we already have for Zambia and Rhodesia, the mystery of the Bantu expansion will have been largely unravelled.
Notes
1 This article is based on a paper read at the Royal Society of Arts on 5 May 1966 and printed in that Society's Journal, CXIV (1966), 852–69. It is reprinted here with the agreement of the R.S.A. [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar]
2 Johnston, H. H., ‘A survey of the ethnography of Africa: and the former racial and tribal migrations of that continent’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XLIII (1913), 391–2. [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar]
3 Wrigley, C. C., ‘Speculations on the economic prehistory of Africa’, Journal of African History, I (1960), 201. [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar]
4 McBurney, C. B. M., The Stone Age of Northern Africa (1960), 234.
5Ibid. 244.
6 Portères, Roland, ‘Berceaux agricoles primaires sur le continent africain’, Journal of African History, III (1962), 195–210; [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar] Clark, J. Desmond, ‘The spread of food production in sub-Saharan Africa’, ibid. 211–28.
7 Fagan, Brian, Southern Africa (1965), 46.
8 Cf. Murdock, G. P., Africa: Its Peoples and their Culture History (New York), 290–1. [Google Scholar]
9Ibid.
10 Greenberg, J. H., Studies in African Linguistic Classification (New Haven, 1955), 40. [Google Scholar]
11 Murdock op. cit. 222–3.
12 Guthrie, Malcolm, ‘Some developments in the pre-history of the Bantu languages’, Journal of African History, III (1962), 273–82. [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar]
13 From Mr Bernard Fagg's ‘layer 3’ at Taruga, containing iron slag and Nok figurines. Accompanying charcoal carbon-dated to 266 s.c. ± 120. Personal communication from Mr Fagg.
14 Unless otherwise stated, all carbon dates are taken from the summaries published in the Journal of African History, II (1961), 137–9, and IV (1963), 527–8. [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar]
15 Guthrie, Malcolm, loc. cit. 285.
16 Mathew, Gervase, ‘The East African coast until the coming of the Portuguese’, in Oliver, R. and Mathew, G., History of East Africa I (Oxford, 1963), 96. [Google Scholar]
17 This was an Iron Age Colonization; therefore it Cannot have been earlier in time than the spread of the Iron Age in Indonesia around the first century A.D.
18 Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P., The East African Coast (1962), 15, etc.
19 Guthrie, Malcolm, loc. cit. 277.
20 Oliver, R., ‘Discernible developments in the interior, c. 1500–1840’, in R. Oliver and G. Mathew, History of East Africa, I (1963), 194–204. [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar]
21 The position in April 1965 was summarized by Dr Brian Fagan in an unpublished paper entitled ‘Iron Age radiocarbon dates in sub-Saharan Africa’, presented to the African History Seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
22 Fagan, Brian, Southern Africa, 94–9.
23Ibid. 100–10, with the primary authorities cited on p. 176.
24 Theal, G. M., Records of South-East Africa (Capetown, 1898–1903), vols. III and VII. [Google Scholar]
25 For example, Fagan, Brian, Southern Africa, 110.
26 Ihle, A., Das alte Königreich Kongo (Leipzig, 1929). [Google Scholar]
27 Oliver and Mathew, op. cit. 180–91. The rough chronology established on genealogical evidence has recently been confirmed by radiocarbon dates from Bigo, the earliest site identifiable in the dynastic tradition of the region.
28 Verhulpen, E., Baluba et Balubaisés (Antwerp, 1939). [Google Scholar]
29 Nenquin, J., ‘Notes on some early pottery cultures in North Katanga’, Journal of African History, IV (1963), 19–32. [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar]
30 Clark, J. Desmond, ‘The spread of food production in sub-Saharan Africa’, Journal of African History, III (1962), 222; [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar] Fagan, B., Southern Africa, 48–51.
31 Oliver, R., ‘Discernible developments in the interior, c. 1500–1840’, in R. Oliver and G. Mathew, History of East Africa, I (1963), 180–91. [OpenURL Query Data][Google Scholar]