Description:
Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary sources, this sweeping study explores the place of bushcraft and agriculture in the precolonial history of south central Africa from the tenth century BCE to the seventeenth century CE. Contrary to popular conceptions that place farming at the heart of political and social change, as historian Kathryn de Luna reveals, political innovation in precolonial African farming societies was actually contingent on developments in hunting, fishing, and foraging--the very activities farming supposedly replaced. Engaging new linguistic and archaeological evidence, the author investigates bushcraft in and beyond the Botatwe-speaking cultures of south central… Africa, from the transition to cereal agriculture to the early modern Indian Ocean ivory and slave trades. What she uncovers are previously unappreciated links among bushcraft, fame, talent, political authority, landscape, gender, language, and personhood.
Author bio: